


I am what you need

by meinposhbastard



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, In a way, M/M, Slow Build, confused!sam, grace meddling, protective!Dean, ratings prone to changes, slight (but very slight) Sleeping Beauty fusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3203396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam falls into a deep sleep in the middle of a hunt. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. Except for Gabriel.</p><p>ON HIATUS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Maybe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/735333) by [maydei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maydei/pseuds/maydei). 



> *snorts unladylike* that summary doesn't even begin to cover what I've got in store for you, but, you know, it serves its purpose. So let me cackle deliciously here as you prepare to delve into the story.
> 
> This fic doesn't respect the show's timeline. But you should keep in mind two things: Gabriel is very much alive and this (whenever 'this' appears in the story) is the first time Sam meets Lucifer in Nick's 'clothes' XD

  ****

Nightmares.

That’s what the Cage is made of.

Pure nightmares made to enclose just one powerful being. It is not evil _per se_ , just cleverly constructed to keep him from getting out.  

Dissonances is another term he’d use for it, because his Cage - yes, it’s _his_ , custom-made if we want to be _elegant_ \- is many things but not matter. It is no more tangible than a human’s dream, but it exists nonetheless. It can be touched (or more like create the sensation of touch) and the feeling can be described in a thousand words from a thousand languages, never quite managing to point out exactly how it feels.

The Cage is wicked. Oh, so very wicked.

It touches you in return. It reaches out for your mind, your soul. It snatches away your sanity and leaves behind only terror and brokenness. That’s why it’s situated at the bottom of the Pit, where only shadows dare approach it. _Dare_ steal some of the light he emanates. Sometimes they bite, provoking nearly imperceptible jolts from him - because the shadows are never friendly, not with him -, but mostly they feed on him.

Slowly. Appreciatively. Reverently, but not quite.

Shadows need light to exist. That doesn’t mean they can’t be wicked.

_Cold. So cold and painful._

The day his Father punished him for refusing to bow to His new toys is still etched painfully in his mind, creating black, thick voids of emotions. He stopped going there a long time ago. They’re always more than ready to engulf him and hardly ever let him go. It’s a tricky way down that particular memory lane.

At least his senses can reach out into the human world. Even if he can’t be physically present there, he still knows what’s going on all the time.

It’s a small spark, a vibrant input from outside his Cage that pulls his entire attention towards it. It’s powerful enough to create ripples in his grace and the moment is suddenly intensified.

There’s freshness in his mouth, as if it’s washed clean with divine water; a bright light springs free from his eyes, different from that of his grace; innocence, glorious purity fills his nostrils, as strange as that might sound; something familiar and warm glides across his grace, making it tingle in the most wonderful of ways and he hears, not the dissonance, no, he hears the silence filling out the white noise.

He is suddenly aware of the five senses humans possess. It takes a millisecond.

_Warm. Soothing. Cosy._

The shadows retreat, chased away by the glowing light he can’t help but let seep through the random cracks in the walls. The Cage becomes nonexistent and quiet. So much quiet surrounds him and he smiles for the first time since forever.

He remembers. The innocence, the warmth that tickled his grace, the playful light. He remembers the one thing he kept so dear and so close to him before he was cast out from Heaven.

His purity. His affection. His bright light that was always so lively and full of wonder. The soul he cradled within his grace. The soul he loved _so_ _much_. The missing piece. His other half.

He waited millennia for him, almost forgot how much peace that soul can bring him. _Almost_ forgot how close to the breaking point he had been the moment he was cut out from Heaven; how much he _missed_ him, how torn apart and lifeless he felt.

It wasn’t as much the Fall that hurt him, as was being separated from his soul. He thrashed and screamed for several millennia in the Pit, hurting himself in the process. When he finally took a small break, he learned about the destructive Cage, how, instead of helping him blow some steam off, it doubled, tripled it. He decided against ever touching it. It was not his intention to be reduced to a useless, broken heap of an archangel.

The pride and a quiet promise to himself that he’ll find his soul no matter what it would take, calmed him considerably and for the past millennia he had patiently waited for this day.

-ooo-

The pull tugs at Gabriel’s grace, followed closely by a crackling sound and the bent of the ether, straining to ease the force out. As he lifts Sam’s dead weight on his shoulder, eyes wide with shock, he looks up at Castiel. No change in the angel’s expression. No dawning horror there.

Of course. It’s archangel he’s talking about here. Castiel’s senses are too dimmed to pick up the subtle interference. Which means that Michael and Raphael felt it too. He might be in for a forced family reunion. And soon.

His grace stirs, and words he would have never wanted to hear again echo at the back of his mind.

There’s no choice. He has to abide by them, even if there’s an oath that’s warring against those same words.

“Castiel,” Gabriel says, “meet me in Montana.”

Castiel gives a curt nod, not questioning the archangel’s decision, and Gabriel disappears with Sam before Dean has time to say anything in edgewise.

“Hey, hey, wait! You son of a bitch!” Dean curses, already in the spot Gabriel and his brother were not five seconds ago. “What’s happening to Sammy? Why is he taking my brother to Montana?” Dean asks furiously, for once being the one that breaches Castiel’s personal space.

The angel studies Dean’s enraged, but worried expression for some time.

“I do not know what is wrong with Sam and why Gabriel decided to take him away,” Castiel tries to explain and Dean growls frustrated, pulling away from the angel. “He seemed worried about something, Dean.”

“Oh, yeah?” He can’t help the sarcastic edge to his words. “Like what?”

“I do not have that information.” Dean huffs an ironic laugh at this. “But it must be something grave if it troubled him so much.”

“Sure it was,” Dean replies more to himself, looking around at the five decapitated vampires littering around in the barn; there’s work to do, Sammy or no Sammy. “We deal with this crap here and then you take me to where Sammy is.”

Cas nods, even if the hunter is already crouched down besides a dead vampire.

-ooo-

Sam’s still unconscious when Gabriel places him on the bed.

He takes a moment to touch the hunter’s forehead to check if he’s all right. He sees nothing. No dream, no nightmare. It’s as if someone switched off the lights in Sam’s head. Gabriel frowns down at him, for a split second afraid that…

No. The boy is still breathing. He still has a pulse.

Gabriel would sag in relief if he could spare another moment, but as it is, he’s already running out of time.

He turns around and gets to work.

Three different symbols are painted on three walls in less than thirty seconds, using holy oil he snapped into existence from Jerusalem and Sam’s own blood. As soon as the last curved line is laid on the fourth pristine wall, all four Enochian symbols activate, carving their form into the cement and forcibly expelling Gabriel from the room.

-ooo-

He grasps the kitchen’s counter, ragged breaths echoing in the almost bare room. The spell was a powerful one. So powerful and dangerous its symbols already start to blur from his mind, even if he tries to grasp and commit them to memory.

It shouldn’t have been performed by an archangel, though. Nobody should use it, ever,  which is why he reluctantly lets the last remnants of the drawings dissipate. He still feels the ruptures in his grace, making him almost whimper in despair. It hurts so much trying to mend himself, to speed up the healing, using his own energy to fill in the empty spaces in his grace.

It feels like a wild creature with huge claws tore into a fine material, reducing it to brandels.

His knees give out on him on a short moment’s notice, hitting the kitchen floor hard. The rasps for air echo off the wall, hands convulsing at his side. He manages to spare crumbles of energy to call Castiel, hoping the angel heard him, because he’s currently focusing all his energies into healing himself.

It takes about ten seconds to feel the familiar grace. He doesn’t sag in relief, concentrated as he is on his inner self.

“Where is Sammy?” Is the first voice that filters to his brain, and Gabriel opens his eyes to see Castiel kneeling in front of him, hand outstretched to touch his cheek.

He’s never seen so much worry in another angel as he sees it now in Castiel. He can make out in his peripheral vision a pair of worn out boots and he knows they belong to Dean, who’s waiting for an answer.

“Safe,” Gabriel whispers, just as his brother’s grace starts pouring into Gabriel’s vessel.

“Gabriel,” Castiel says, even if he’s concentrated on helping the archangel heal, “why is your grace tore apart?”

Gabriel’s eyelids are half closed. He finds it difficult to focus on what Castiel is asking, when he feels how very different their graces are and how hard it is for them to blend together. It’s like adding water to a half empty glass of milk. It’s not the same as having another archangel’s energy heal his wounds, this solution won’t last, he knows, but for now it’s as good as he can hope for. He needs to give a chance to his grace to regenerate itself and if using angelic duct tape to help do it faster, then so be it.

He’s not picky; can’t afford to be right now.

“I had to secure Sam,” Gabriel says after a couple of minutes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, but it doesn’t seem directed to either Cas or Dean. “He’s coming.”

“Who’s coming?” Dean asks, bewildered.

“Him,” the archangel grunts out, eyes closed; an odd suspended silence follows that word, as if the entire world holds in its breath, before Gabriel’s lips part once again and a name ushers out in a whisper, “Lucifer.”

Castiel’s eyes widen at the name and Dean’s about to say something when the windows and the front door explode, catching them off-guard and forcing Dean on the ground. Castiel throws himself over Gabriel, protecting the archangel with his own body against the glass shards that come cascading down on them.

“Sammy,” Dean says worriedly, when the pieces stop falling; Gabriel stops him from getting up, a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“He’s fine,” he stresses the last word. “I warded the room against any angelic being. I don’t reduce myself to this mess just for kicks, you know,” Gabriel says, trying for a smirk and missing by a mile.

“Gabriel, I’m home,” Lucifer’s calm voice reaches their ears, and Castiel is already on his feet, angel blade in hand.

Gabriel whimpers softly when the pouring grace is suddenly cut off, but they patched up the most threatening of the wounds, so he forces himself to get up, now more clear headed.

Dean is already besides Castiel to see who’s the poor bastard’s body the Devil possessed. He’s awfully aware of the incessant vibration that glides on the walls in waves and how the paint peels itself off, piece after piece; there’s so much tension in the air, that it won’t take but a tiny spark to set everything off. Dean wouldn’t want to be there when that happens.

He’s met with a pair of clear blue eyes, but unlike Castiel’s, they look like they encompass an Arctic winter inside, ready to wreak havoc. Dean shivers uncontrollably; the sheer power that’s barely kept at bay by the body Lucifer’s inhabiting sets off Dean’s every alarm.

Lucifer tuts when he sees Castiel’s combat stance. “It would be wise for you if you tucked that away,” he says, as if he tries to warn a child, but then his attention moves to Gabriel.

It’s difficult for Gabriel to stand upright, limbs not quite coordinate, still drunk from the little grace that flows into them. He has to use the kitchen island to steady himself.

Apart from the heavy panting, which is unusual for any angel, and half-lidded eyes, he doesn’t seem like he’s in pain -- or hurt.

“What happened to you, brother?” Lucifer frowns, looking quite concerned for Gabriel. “Why is your grace falling apart?”

Gabriel musters the energy to smirk, even if it comes out almost lunatic. “Tricky business I had to finish before your arrival,” he shrugs, which pulls out a sharp intake of breath.

Lucifer’s keen eyes search Gabriel’s expression.

Dean chooses that moment to act, but he gets as much as a step forward, before Lucifer’s gaze pins the hunter bodily to the wall behind him. The same happens to Castiel, too slow to use Dean’s momentum to land a blow. The vibrations seep into their bodies as the wooden wall rattles at their back, now with more force than before.

“Lucifer--” Gabriel starts, attention never straying from his brother.

“Where is he, brother?” Lucifer demands, his eyes focused on the other archangel now. “I can feel his presence here, but it’s muffled and blurry.” Gabriel looks down, guilt and agony filling his expression and Lucifer’s eyes darken with muted, cold anger. “Where is he?” he asks, slowly, but with more force and Gabriel’s eyes dart up to meet the beginning of a devastating storm.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Gabriel ushers out, once again feeling like a fledgling before his brother. “I couldn’t fight against Him!” He tries to explain himself, but Lucifer is shaking his head.

“No,” he whispers. “What did you do?”

“I--”

“Gabriel, what did you _do_?” Lucifer’s voice breaks from his mouth, ancient, terrifying and Gabriel actually flinches; there’s more to that flinch than a reaction to his brother’s rage.

Undiluted power oozes from Lucifer, unseen by anyone, except for the two angels in the room. It reduces the house’s walls to dust, safe for the one where Dean and Cas are pinned against. The glowing wards of Sam’s room (or what is left of it) attract Lucifer’s attention, pulling him towards it like a moth towards light. Gabriel uses this opportunity to get closer to Castiel and Dean.

“You son of a bitch!” Dean shouts as the Devil approaches the ‘cube’ Sam seems to be trapped in. “If you touch even one--”

Risking to make himself even weaker, Gabriel uses a bit of his grace to take Dean’s voice. “Shut it, if you wanna live,” he glares at the hunter. Dean glares back.

“Gabriel, I don’t think it’s wise--” Castiel tries to warn his brother, but Gabriel turns his stern glare towards him.

“I need to get us outta here,” he says, as he gathers all the energy that he still has to counterattack Lucifer’s barrier and free his brother and Dean. “I don’t stand a flimsy chance against him right now.”

He looks up at his brother, jaw set and eyes starting to glow, ignoring Dean’s attempts at protesting, even pinned to the wall and without voice.

“You’ll have to be quick and fly us outta here,” Gabriel tells him as his eyes reach a brightness that forces Dean to close his own.

Then, it’s a flurry of movement.

Gabriel infuses the little grace he can spare, pushing himself to the limit of his life, into the invisible barrier that’s keeping the two secured to the wall, Dean gets back his voice and before Gabriel hits the ground, Castiel catches him and Dean, effectively flying them off.

As the remains of the cabin get smaller and smaller, Gabriel opens his eyes when a roared word reaches his ears, before falling back into an unguarded state.

_“Gabriel!”_ ****

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asked maydei for permission to use one of her ideas from her work, Maybe. And this was almost a year ago. I've given up on this work several times since then, until I did an 80 degrees change of perspective on the plot. It seemed this new angle tickled my muse, so I've been working on it for a couple of months now.
> 
> From the first, original plot, only the first scene has remained (more or less) intact.
> 
> Currently, this work doesn't have a Beta. If, by any chance there's somebody who'd like to dedicate a bit of time to look over the future chapters, my [ask](http://meinposhbastard.tumblr.com/ask/) is open :)


	2. Chapter 2

********

Sam’s world shakes violently.

It’s not an earthquake, even though that’s what the action implies.

No. He has intimate knowledge of this world, because it belongs to him. His mind created it. It’s a part of him and it continues shaking.

Bobby’s living room walls rattle and in some places screech as if the wood is close - _so close_ \- to breaking, it cries out in desperation for it to happen. Nothing falls or moves or vibrates. His sight doesn’t catch anything that might lead him to think about an earthquake (or something resembling it), but he knows the tremors are real. Or as real as the place leaves the impression to be.

_Frustrating._

He feels the thought long before that little voice of his makes it heard.

“You should wake up, you know?” He hears a familiar voice and when he turns his head, an equally familiar face greets him, although deep down he knows he’s never seen this person.

“You--” Is as far as he gets to say, because he’s momentarily distracted by the change in scenery.

He’s not anymore on Bobby’s couch, but somewhere on a green hill, his back to a tree and a fresh breeze playing with his hair.

Beyond his feet, a forest of pines stretches onwards like a dark green comforter over the valley, and further down the silhouettes of snow-capped mountains paint the horizon.

He turns back to Lucifer, silently debating if he should ask the obvious question or if his expression is enough to pull out an answer from him.

“Rocky Mountains,” he says, still looking straight ahead. “Or--somewhere close by.”

The ground shakes again, but nothing changes. Sam suspects he’s the only one that feels the tremors. It’s uncomfortable, in all honesty.

“What is that?” he asks, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder.

It’s been a constant weight at the back of his mind, even if only now does it manifest. He doesn’t need to turn back. He already knows what shape it is, although he has no idea what it’s used for.

“Your cage,” Lucifer says simply.

Sam throws him an incredulous look.

“It’s my brother’s doing,” the fallen archangel explains, looking into the far distance, a wan expression on his features.

“Your brother’s? Why?”

“To keep me from getting to you.”

Sam frowns. “But you’re... here, next to me.”

Lucifer smiles, fondness and sorrow smoldering together. He reaches for Sam with his hand, but stops midway. When Sam looks questioningly at him, Lucifer beckons him to meet him halfway. Sam complies and his eyes widen when he feels -- nothing. No cold, no warmth; no smooth, no rough. Nothing. It terrifies him.

“I can only reach you through your dreams, Sam,” Lucifer confesses, looking sad, heartbroken.

Sam swallows and looks back at ‘his’ cage. It looks like an almost transparent square, four big symbols seemingly burning through air in a yellow-orange-red glow. When he looks back at Lucifer, he is gone.

****

-ooo-

****

“Cas, we need to get back there,” Dean insists, after Castiel took care to hide them from the angelic sight and Gabriel was deposited on a bed to regenerate himself. “I need to make sure Sammy’s fine!”

“We can’t,” Castiel says firmly. “And Sam is safe where he is.”

“Safe?” Dean screeches. “In the middle of nowhere? With the fucking Devil roaming around? What if he wakes up?”

“We need to trust Gabriel on this.”

“Trust _him_? The Trickster?”

“He is still an archangel, Dean,” Castiel counters. “He would never put Sam into harm’s way.”

Dean scoffs and throws a glance at Gabriel’s unmoving body. He has nothing to say to that.

“Why did he do that?” Dean quietly asks, still looking at Gabriel. “He looked like he was prepared for Sam to fall down just like that. He expected it.” A pause; he turns to look at Cas. “Why did Gabriel ward Sam against angels almost at the cost of his life?”

Castiel is silent for a couple of seconds, looking at his brother too. “I think it has something to do with God.”

****

-ooo-

****

_Oh shit. Here it comes. Family reunion._

“Lucifer has escaped,” Michael’s true voice resonates in the blinding space.

Gabriel can’t help but smirk acridly. “Really? It must’ve escaped my attention.” Sarcasm at its finest. Not that his emotionally repressed brother will pick up on it.

“You need to stop him.”

“I don’t think so,” Gabriel says.

Their graces are so close, they’re creating static in the small space between them. This time, Gabriel doesn’t have the necessary energy to conjure some place in his dream, so he let it bare, just like it originally is before imagination takes over.

“You are disobeying--”

“This goes beyond disobeying Heaven, Michael!” Gabriel snarls, anger making his grace thrash. “This is as far as I’m going with ol’ Gramps’ order.”

“Are you disloyal?”

“Oh, I’m loyal,” the archangel says. “To people, Michael. To that soul I was forced to imprison upon Lucifer’s arrival on earth.”

“You always had a soft spot for that soul,” Michael says, almost disdainful. “Ever since it came into your care.”

Gabriel laughs bitterly, although fond memories come spilling unbidden in his mind. “Are you hearing yourself? You’re judging _me_ for following our Father’s word and love these creatures more than Him. You’re doing _the same_ thing you disregard in humans.”

“This is different.”

And this conversation takes him nowhere. Which calls for a change of tactics, then.

“How do you think he feels right now?” Gabriel asks instead, voice hard and bothered; it makes him tear himself apart when he thinks of Lucifer’s agony. “Your brother -- _our_ brother, because he will forever remain our brother, damn all the feud that runs in this family! He is suffering more than we can imagine,” he says, and even if in this space they have no humanoid shape, it sounds as if he speaks through clenched teeth.

“The soul he helped create, the very soul that shares his grace, locked in a cage much like Lucifer was since the Beginning,” the seeth pours gallons in the metaphysical space they’re in. “How would you feel if Adam was denied to you?” he asks, deliberately stressing each word.

Michael bristles. Gabriel has his answer.

“Thought so.”

“Lucifer shouldn’t be let to roam free on earth,” Michael continues, as if nothing happened until now. “We need to strike now while he’s distracted.”

Gabriel’s grace flares monumentally and ominously, almost overwhelming Michael’s. “Get out!” He thunders and Michael is forced to return to where he came from.

****

-ooo-

****

“Gabriel,” Castiel says, a panicked note to his tone. Upon looking in his direction, Gabriel realizes that if it weren’t for Castiel protecting the hunter with his body, Dean would have two burnt holes instead of a pair of eyes.

Michael pulled nastily at his seams, so in his anger he might have let his grace slip from his vessel.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” The archangel flutters a hand as he gets up from the bed, refreshed and recharged.

He’s feeling marginally better now, not that the guilt for his action and the anger towards Michael have diminished. If nothing else, they’ve grown a notch or two.

“Yeah?” quips Dean, straightening up. “Well, I’m not. What the hell was that?”

“Family reunion,” Gabriel replies wryly.

That piques Castiel’ attention. “What did Michael want?”

Gabriel rolls his eyes. “By this point in time it should be obvious, baby bro. The usual spiel, Lucifer is dangerous, he needs to be dealt with… blah, blah, blah. I wonder if he’ll ever get bored of repeating himself over and over again.” He huffs irritated and zaps a lollipop in his mouth, just because he can.

“Take me to Sam,” Dean demands, stepping up in front of Gabriel.

“Nobody takes anybody to Sam-o there,” Gabriel says flippantly. “You have zero chances of surviving Lucifer’s now growing anger, let alone counter it. He might be the Devil to you, but he’s still an archangel deep down. Using your run-to-mill weapons against him is like throwing pebbles at a mountain. But if your death wish is so--”

“Gabriel,” Castiel stresses the word, giving the archangel a disapproving look.

Gabriel sighs. “Look, I’m not saying you won’t ever see your brother, but you have to cool your jets a bit and let the matters into capable hands.”

Dean rises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Like yours.”

“Bingo!” Gabriel smiles, pleased.

The hunter shakes his head. “Not gonna happen.”

“Like it or not, it’s gonna happen,” Gabriel tells him, suddenly in the mood to rile up the older Winchester.

Dean sighs and passes his hand over his face, frustrated beyond any limit. He doesn’t want to make things worse, though, so he tries to clear his head a bit. Not because patience took pity on him and extended a bonus, but because for one, he’s tired, emotionally and physically alike, and for two, he spares a lot of energy not taking Gabriel on.

Sam would be proud of him, he thinks with a wry smile.

“Why warded?” he asks instead, all the fight gone from his voice.

Gabriel regards him for a moment, reading everything he needs to know from the hunter’s face; oddly enough, he decides to grant him the answer he is seeking for.

“Long story short, Old Man’s orders.”

“But God is gone,” Castiel frowns.

Gabriel throws him a pointed look and a wordless message. _Do you think He gave me orders yesterday?_

“What’s happening to Sam? Why did he drop like that?” Dean finally asks, a part of the problem he forgot about until now.

Gabriel looks back up at him with something akin to wariness for a split moment, before the lollipop in his mouth changes sides and his lips stretch into a smirk. “Never heard of a power nap, Dean-o?” He tries to slowly steer the conversation elsewhere.

Dean’s eyes narrow, catching on the trick. After all, it takes one to know one.

“You’re lying through your borrowed teeth, asshat! What are you hiding?” he demands angrily, the fight making its way back into his body as he advances on Gabriel, breaching his personal space.

For his part, the archangel looks unfazed at the display of power in front of him. He’s immune to the Winchester’s intimidating trick. Well, any angel is. Unless it involves holy oil.

“There’s nothing else I can tell you that I haven’t already. Sam’s fine,” he repeats, because it seems that repeating certain key-words to the hunter, they eventually manage to get through his thick skull.

“You keep saying that,” Dean seeths through his clenched teeth, hands grabbing Gabriel’s jacket lapels, “but Sam’s still not awake, he’s still trapped in that fucking cube and on top of that Satan’s circling my brother like a lion ready to pounce on its prey. How is that _fine_?” he spits out, glaring daggers at the archangel.

Gabriel doesn’t respond immediately. Instead he takes Dean’s hands off him, returning the glare. There’s more to this mess than meets the eye, but the situation is still within the manageable parameters to freely break the dam that’s keeping Gabriel  from revealing what really is the core issue of the current problem.

It’s too soon. Dean would argue with that, so Gabriel wisely keeps his mouth shut on the matter. After all, it’s not like Dean has millennia upon millennia of experience to back up that decision. He’s just a mere child in the eyes of his wisdom.

“Dean,” Castiel intervenes, suddenly at his side. “You need to calm down.”

“Calm down?” Dean says incredulously. “Sam’s trapped there--”

“I know it’s hard for you to leave your brother with Lucifer so close,” Castiel interrupts him. Gabriel smirks, unseen by the two. “But you need to leave your anger aside and think things through.”

“I can’t just stay here twiddlin’ my fucking thumbs,” Dean reiterates, opting to pace in front of Cas like a caged animal. “I have to be there besides my brother, man! I can’t lose him! I can’t leave him to face… where’s Gabriel?” he asks, looking at the empty space where the archangel was not a minute ago.

Castiel looks bemused at it. “He’s not here,” he concludes, more to himself than to Dean.

“The son of a bitch went back!” the hunter screeches, hands balled into tight fists. “Cas, let’s go!”

But Castiel is silent and unmoving. Dean frowns at him and opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but the angel precedes him. “I’m unable to fly,” he states, somewhat clinically, looking into the mid-distance, lost in his thoughts.

Dean’s eyebrows climb up a floor or two. “What do you mean you can’t fly?”

Castiel’s eyes dart up to meet Dean’s. “Gabriel blocked my wings on the plane I keep them. My grace is unable to reach them.”

Dean’s eyes darken with boiling anger. “I’m gonna murder that son of a bitch!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you saw, some Gabriel lines from the show made their way into this fic. They got stuck in my head and I couldn't help but sneak them in (although one, cocky line of Gabriel's was attributed to Lucifer in the first chapter XD).


	3. Chapter 3

 

Gabriel expected miles and miles of scorched ground, trees burnt to ashes, heavy clouds thundering, spitting fireballs and in general creating an image of what the Apocalypse could look like.

What he actually sees doesn’t look very different from what he left behind, when they fled the place. The forest is intact, the sky, although nighttime has fallen, is clear and the billions little dots of fading stars flicker above them. Everything is asleep around the place where the cabin once was -- except Lucifer.

The odd addition to the whole scenery, Gabriel might say. But then he’d be an asshole and a pathetic liar.

Lucifer’s not out of place there. If anything else, he looks like he’s at home, although his sitting position could suffer some improvement. The stiffness and stillness of his vessel doesn’t add points to his human side. But Lucifer seems to be in some sort of trance, eyes closed and features relaxed, the closest they could ever come to the notion of sleeping.

Gabriel is still cloaked with as many layers as his grace allows him, opting to stall for a little bit more the inevitable confrontation with his brother. Even this far in time, he still feels a weak sensation of discomfort -- of apprehension. What makes his lips form a thin line is not the intensity of the feeling, but the fact that he feels it at all.

“Are you done dithering around, Gabriel?” Lucifer asks, eyes opening and looking straight at his brother.

Gabriel silently curses. His efforts of remaining undetected until he considered the time to reveal himself were not enough to hide him from Lucifer’s penetrating gaze.

“Hey there, bro!” Gabriel fakes a cheery tone, smiling as wide as possible.

“Drop the act, Gabriel, and take off the wards,” Lucifer demands in the same levelled voice.

Gabriel’s jolly mask falls in the blink of an eye, leaving behind sadness, guilt and agony. “I can’t,” he breaks the eye contact, focusing on the sleeping body behind the flaming symbols.

Lucifer’s eye twitch, as if wanting to blink. “You were the one that put them in the first place.” His tone comes out accusatory.

Gabriel frowns. “And do you think I was happy about it? Do you think I would willingly separate your soul from you?” He asks, frustrated at being accused of something he didn’t want to have a part in, but ended up doing it anyway.

“I don’t know, Gabriel,” Lucifer’s icy voice washes over him, even with as many metres between them as there are now. “You tell me. From what I can see, you didn’t have any remorse forsaking the oath you swore to me in favor of caring out God’s order.”

Gabriel is almost squashed by the amount of guilt Lucifer’s words trigger. As if it wasn’t enough the anguish he felt when he understood what he had to do. As if he didn’t feel himself tear apart for ignoring his oath to Lucifer. The consequences the wards had on him were not enough to atone for what he did.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Gabriel utters, defeated.

The smile Lucifer offers him is downright cruel. “You always have a choice. I think I proved that when I Fell.”

“Sacrificing Sam,” Gabriel says quietly, glancing back towards the unconscious body of the hunter before returning to his brother.

Lucifer’s gaze follows his brother’s. Pain and longing fills his features, and Gabriel has to tear his eyes away from Lucifer’s face. He knew how much it would hurt his brother, yet he still carried on. His fist clenches at the memory of joy, wonder and love Lucifer had for this soul.

That is the brother Gabriel painfully misses.

“I’m still mad at you, Gabriel,” Lucifer tells him sternly, eyes still on Sam.

“I know,” he whispers.

A pregnant pause coats the air between them, lacing it with the sourness of pain and betrayal.

“Please get him out of there!” Lucifer suddenly says, voice strained and thick with emotion, and Gabriel’s eyes dart up in surprise to meet pleading blues. “I can’t stand to have him so close, yet unable to reach him. It pains me to see him caged, much like I’ve been. He doesn’t deserve to be punished.” A pause, gaze lowered on the dark and cold ground. “I don’t deserve this… out of everything Father can throw at me.” He whispers. “To not feel his soul as I should… that is plain wrong and you know it!” Lucifer focuses his attention on Gabriel again, pain and anger mingling together.

The archangel swallows drily, knowing he’s unable to undo what has already been done. By his Father’s word. Imprisoning an innocent soul as if it were too evil to be let free. The irony of it disgusts Gabriel to no end.

“Please, Gabriel,” Lucifer repeats, voice dying to a whisper. “He’s all I have now. The last shred of love for everything I rebelled against.”

Gabriel presses his lips together in distress. He wants to help his brother so badly, but his attempt at retrieving Sam would be as futile as Lucifer’s. It’s the most powerful ward he’s ever used. Nothing can enter, not even humans, because it’s tightly linked to the person that’s inside.

Only Sam can deactivated them, and for that to happen he needs to wake up, but not even Gabriel knows for how long he’ll sleep.

His features are marred with guilt and pain when he whispers, “I’m sorry, brother.”

The silence stretches on for a long time and when Gabriel dares to look up at Lucifer, he can can do nothing to appease the rage that boils within an inch of his vessel’s skin.

“Leave,” Lucifer says through clenched teeth.

Gabriel purses his lips. He doesn’t want to leave just like that. He needs to make his brother understand… understand… he doesn’t even know if there’s still something to understand here. His actions spoke clearly of his betrayal. Words won’t ever match the solid proof in meaning.

“Lucifer, I know--”

“ _Leave!_ ” his voice booms like a thunder and Gabriel is forcibly expelled by the sheer power Lucifer pushed through the air.

Gabriel manages to catch himself before he’s thrown all the way to Africa--or South Pole. He remains there, above the clouds that travel leisurely across the ocean to get a grip of himself and put an order to his thoughts. He doesn’t need Castiel to read him like an open book or become suspicious on account of his grim face.

They’ll demand explanations for his sudden disappearance anyway.

-ooo-

When Lucifer enters Sam’s dream world, he finds his soul standing at the edge of a cliff. There’s an odd calm about him, stillness to the point of not being considered human anymore.

And then he’s falling.

Lucifer is there in an instant, bending down over the edge, his worry breaking through his stoic expression. It’s always harder to hide his true emotions in a dreamscape than in reality. Dreams are meant to explore one’s deepest and most repressed desires. Masks are useless tools in a dimension where lies are unveiled.

The rules apply to whoever steps in.

“Lucifer,” Sam breathes out astonished by the presence of the other. There’s wariness also, but it’s dimed compared to the surprise and relief the archangel sees in his hunter’s face.

“Sam, grab my hand!” Lucifer tells him, extending his hand as far as he can, being unable to use his wings or any of his powers right now, for unknown reasons.

It’s unusual, to put it mildly. In dreams, more than in reality, he should be able to use his grace freely.

Then, Sam’s eyes widen, panic spilling out onto his face.

“The cage,” he whispers terrorised, and the archangel sees the shape of it at the bottom of the cliff, just underneath Sam. “The cage is sucking me in, I can’t move my hands, Lucifer! I can’t…”

He falls before Lucifer can do anything and he’s prepared to jump in after Sam, but instead he’s expelled from Sam’s dream just as Sam is engulfed by the cage’s walls once again.

A pained roar erupts from his throat when Lucifer comes to himself. The forest falls quiet and even the wind ceases, as if frozen in place for fear of having that tremendous amount of anger directed at them. He collides with the nearest symbol in his rage, not caring for the damage it creates on his vessel, not paying any heed to the pain that spikes ferociously each time he makes contact with the invisible - but for the symbol - wall.

He punches and kicks and scratches at it, features contorted into the purest form of resentment. It’s not enough, his anger rising and becoming more demanding, so he unleashes his wings at once, all three pairs and with them a suffocating amount of grace comes pouring out, producing crackling sounds in the air. The vegetation withers away under its pressure, unable to resist the sudden outburst of raw energy.

He uses the maximised speed thanks to his wings and attacks the heinous cage that’s keeping Sam trapped, thinking that maybe ungodly speed would _do_ something to the barrier. He clashes from each and every angle he can think of, persisting until the break of dawn.

It catches him floating above the cage, a perfect view of Sam’s unconscious body. He leans in, mirroring Sam’s horizontal position. He’s peaceful, no shadow of torment even if Lucifer knows the cage rests heavily upon his subconscious.

He gets as close as the wards will permit him, even adventuring so far as to touch the invisible wall. The need to feel his soul close to him once again, to touch the human shape it’s inhabiting is so enormous, so unbearable that he doesn’t notice the damage to his hands until it’s too late. The skin of his palms was eaten away, revealing the bones of his fingers.

His lips press minutely against each other, a flash of anguish and primordial rage in his eyes, then he flies back where he’s been sitting for almost a day and a half now. He closes his eyes and little by little his wings fade into the shimmering light that comes spilling down from over the peaks of the mountains at his back. The skin that’s been so brutally ripped apart from his arms and legs closes in seamlessly and Lucifer tries to reach Sam once again.

-ooo-

His mask isn’t in a better shape when he finally decides to return to the motel room. Dean is in a murderous mood and the glare he shoots Gabriel promises hell. He remembers to unblock Castiel’s wings and his brother seems grateful to finally access them, even though now they’re numb and he won’t be able to use them properly for another couple of minutes. Wings and grace work like limbs and blood. Once you cut the blood from flowing in, the limbs grow numb and unresponsive.

Gabriel doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze and the tense silence doesn’t help him relax one muscle.

He sighs. “I had to talk to Lucifer… alone,” he adds, giving them a cursory glance.

“Sam?” Dean asks, for the moment pushing aside the spiteful remarks he has in store for Gabriel; his brother is more important than some grudge against the Trickster.

“Still dead to the world.”

Dean’s face falls, looking sideways, then he frowns. “You said it’s angel warded. So the more reason for you to take me there so I can get to--”

Gabriel shakes his head. “It’s not just angel warded.” He sighs again and goes to sit by the window. “It’s an absolute ward. No creature in creation can cross it.”

Genuine surprise fills Dean’s features. “Does such a ward even exist? I’ve never heard about it.”

Cas steps up, still assessing Gabriel’s turned back. “It doesn’t. No one knows about the existence of such a spell.” His eyes narrow on his brother. “Until now.”

Gabriel tenses. “Hey, I keep telling people it’s not my fault, but nobody seems to listen to me. I had no choice there!” Gabriel starts all defensive and troubled. “You don’t just decide to ignore God’s word, do you? I couldn’t fight it and I can’t take back what I did. How many times do I have to remind you?”

“Wait, what about Sammy? Doesn’t it affect him, too?” Dean pointedly ignores Gabriel’s comment.

Gabriel scoffs to the point of turning out petulant. “It doesn’t. He’s not quite human.”

“What do you mean?” Dean’s eyes turn wide like saucers and Gabriel winces at his slip of tongue.

But he’s tired of keeping things to himself, of lying or bending the truth to suit his actions. He just wants to _stop_.

He sighs once again; it's becoming a habit rather quickly. “You won’t gonna like what you’ll hear now, but you can’t do jack squat to change it so I might as well tell you.”

Gabriel can feel the raised tension that comes tumbling in waves from Dean. If he keeps up the suspension any longer, he’s not sure Dean won’t come down with stomach ulcer or something.

“Sam’s soul isn’t quite pure,” he begins, but raises a hand to stop whatever Dean wants to say. “Not in the ‘demon tainted’ kind of way pure, but as in his soul has grace mixed in with it.”

Dean looks dumbfounded at him and Castiel tilts his head to one side, searching Gabriel’s face for whatever information his mouth doesn’t reveal.

“You don’t know, Castiel, because you came into existence after Lucifer fell, but God gave the four of us an opportunity to see how He creates the souls and He even went all the way and let us mingle some of our grace with one soul of our choosing from the four that were taking shape then,” Gabriel says, looking with a wistful smile into the mid-distance. “Mine isn’t due to come into this world for another half century.”

“I’m not following anymore,” Dean says, shaking his head in confusion, unable to put two and two together.

Gabriel looks at him. “Lucifer is the one that helped create Sam’s soul,” he tells him neutrally.

Dean falls limply on the bed, knees unable to keep him up.

Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Before you start judgin’, Shothead, remember that Lucifer was an archangel who sang God’s praise and shone brighter than us, when he created Sam’s soul.” That wasn’t what he wanted to say, but for some reasons he feels compelled to protect Lucifer and the link he has with Sam.

“Gabriel,” Castiel intervenes. “Why did Sam fall asleep?”

Gabriel blows some air. “I’ve no idea. It’s obvious Lucifer’s release triggered the Sleeping Princess in Sasquatch, but why… I don’t know.”

-ooo-

Sam’s feet hit the ground furiously, desperately, trying to escape an ominous presence he can’t seem to lose. It’s a continuous prickling on the back of his neck, always just a short breath away from _snatching_ him and dragging his fighting body back. The emptiness around is unsettling. Not a soul as far as he can see.

That’s not how he remembers Chicago. Rumbles at his back put a hitch into his run every time they boom across the sky; they’re always followed by snaps of light, as if someone up there is angry enough to make their whip lash out in outrage and short-temper.

Thunderstorm is a mile behind him, but he feels it just as close as the ominous  presence that’s been hunting him since he can remember.

The quick pants are muffled to his own ears, but they’re as real as they can get.

He bumps into something or someone just as he’s about to round a corner and they fall on the ground.

“Lucifer! It’s coming! It’s coming after me!” Sam says terrified, not thinking about the fact that he knows exactly who he’s bumped into.

Lucifer’s hands are securely settled on Sam’s arms, expression calm and assessing. He’s bemused by the stark contrast between Sam’s body language and his voice. He saw it previously, too. His tone is beckoning, welcoming even, but he acts as if he wants to put a lot of distance between them. It feels as if there’s a war going on inside him, unbeknownst to the host.

They get up and Sam becomes all jittery, fingers twitching uncontrollably and body moving from one leg to another. He keeps casting glances behind his back and the wind picks up considerably.

“Sam, you need to calm down,” Lucifer tells him, forcing the hunter’s attention to him by grabbing Sam’s jaw with two fingers; Lucifer’s expression is hard and set, but there’s also reassurance in there. “This is a dream. Your dream,” he tells him firmly. “You can control it.”

“I can’t, I can’t…” Sam says in distress; he’s shaking now.

“Yes, you can. You have the power to control everything that happens in your dream, Sam!”

But Sam’s eyes widen. “It’s here,” he whispers and Lucifer realises the storm is upon their heads.

Sam’s body tenses to the point of becoming a rigid plank in Lucifer’s hands, and before either of them know it, he’s snatched from within the archangel’s grasp and dragged to the cage that finally caught up with Sam.

“Lucifer!” Sam shouts as the archangel is unable to reach for him, even if he started running towards him. “Lucifer, I don’t wanna go back there!” he pleads ceaselessly, eyes filled with horror and panic. “Please! I don’t wanna be alone again!” Is the last thing Lucifer hears, before being expelled from the dream once again.


	4. Chapter 4

Lucifer is as still as the rock he’s sitting on, when they appear. Clearly his attention is elsewhere. Huge, heavy clouds rumble above head, ready to unleash the accumulated water. A certain tension hangs in the air, leaving no room for the wind.

“What did you do to my brother?” Dean asks as soon as he sees him.

He doesn’t care if Lucifer is an archangel or the Devil or whatever. His brother is trapped in that cage and he won’t stand by doing nothing. Even if that means playing with fire.

Lucifer’s gaze is faraway and by the lazy fluctuation of his grace, Gabriel knows that he’s in Sam’s dream.

“Ask Gabriel that question,” Lucifer answers after a while, tone smooth but distant.

Dean turns around, giving the Trickster a questioning look.

“I’m responsible for imprisoning Sam, but I’m not the one who put him to sleep,” Gabriel offers, looking at his brother.

Lucifer’s brow creases slightly, the only sign that he finds it as confusing as Gabriel.

“Just ask, Sam,” Lucifer says. “You only need to ask.”

Sam studies his features for a long time. Lucifer doesn’t shy away from the scrutiny. He maintains Sam’s gaze without difficulty, pouring into his expression as much longing, love, warmth, pain and sadness as he can.

This time, Lucifer meets his soul trapped in the cage. No more chasing, no more running; archangel and soul calmly facing each other. It pains Lucifer more than he lets on his face to have Sam so close and still unable to touch him or be near him.

The longing reached the point where he’s a breath away from doing something rash and foolish. He won’t stay put anymore, won’t wait for a solution to creep into his mind. Sam belongs _to_ him; _with_ him. Nothing and nobody has the right to come between them, his Father included.

He’s been rational long enough. Now he wants to take action, and if that action implies unlocking a few key-memories of Sam’s soul that have been locked away upon Sam’s descendance to earth, then so be it.

“Release them.” Soft, delicate, words barely caught in the still air between them. But they are crystal clear to Lucifer, as if Sam spoke them right into his ear.

The rush of grace overwhelms his limbs for a short moment and before long, three pairs of huge, dark wings flutter into existence, reverberating the air around them. Sam’s cage rattles around him, as if somehow intimidated by the sheer power of them, but Sam’s attention is too absorbed by what his eyes take in to pay attention to anything else.

“Gabriel,” Castiel says, warning and worry in his tone, and Dean looks back at his angel.

Gabriel narrows his eyes and a tension creeps into his shoulders, different than the one already present in the air. He doesn’t turn around to greet the newcomers.

“You son of a bitch!” Dean growls as he takes in Michael and Raphael, Ruby’s knife already in his hand, although he knows it won’t do jack squat against archangels. Still, he finds comfort in the weight of the weapon. “Get out of my dad!”

Michael smiles that infuriating patronizing smile, although his attention is swiftly caught by Lucifer. Raphael’s the first to speak and to address Dean. “Watch your tone, you hairless ape,” he says disdainfully.

“Bite me,” Dean retorts and Gabriel smirks.

“Dean,” Castiel warns, but there are also traces of concern; instinctually, he places himself between the hunter and the two archangels.

“Well, isn’t this just adorable?” Gabriel intervenes, finally turning around to take in his two brothers. “I thought your little impromptu visit was enough as far as family reunions go,” he addresses Michael, “Raphy getting nostalgic?” he asks, a cruel smile curving up his lips.

Raphael’s eyes flash up with something otherworldly and the air crackles with tension and electricity, Gabriel responding in kind. There’s a staring contest going on between the two, but Michael seems unfazed by their antics.

Dean decides he’d like a place in the spotlight, too, but Castiel stops him. When he looks up at the angel, he sees a stern warning in his eyes and he reluctantly stays put. He looks back at his brother, his body obstructed by the flaming symbol and then at Lucifer.

There’s no expression on his face, nothing to show that he’s aware of the two new addition to their little rendez-vous, but if there’s anything Dean learned about archangels and angels alike in the short time he’s known of their existence, is that nothing escapes their attention. Not when it comes to their kin.

Dean’s head snaps back to the other three archangels when a shift in the air triggers his hunter’s honed senses. Gabriel changed his position, now a few steps further to the side from Dean and Cas, his usually relaxed posture now crouched into a defensive one. For a second, Dean is confused, but then he looks at Michael and realises the archangel is somehow midway between Raphael and Gabriel.

“Brother,” Michael says neutrally, features stoic, although his eyes tell another story. It’s unnerving for Dean to look at the archangel; the memories of his dad before and after the possession are in a fiery battle right now.

Gabriel’s right hand is poised at his side, as if to catch something. “Mickey,” he mimicks Michael’s tone mockingly, although his expression is hard and focused. “That’s as far as you go.”

And Dean knows, without a shadow of doubt, that Gabriel is protecting Lucifer.

“So beautiful,” Sam whispers, awed beyond measure.

Lucifer’s surprised by the impact Sam’s astonishment has on him.

They move simultaneously, caught in the wonder that is the other, move closer to each other, physically impossible to resist the force that drives them. Soon, Lucifer’s wings loom over the cage, over Sam, casting shimmering shadows, dark and ominous to everybody but to the one who called them forth.

The barrier does not exist when Sam’s hand pierces through the veil. Desire knows no boundaries, no limits. Cage or no cage, his hand reaches for the nearest wing and shock fills Lucifer’s features when the symbols burn themselves into the air, crumbling into nothingness.

_Majestic. Huge. Dark. Warm. Soft._

The touch electrifies both of them, and the words insinuate themselves into Lucifer’s mind like the shy smiles of maidens at a ball. They share the shudder that shakes their bodies, but the touch isn’t severed. If nothing else, Sam’s hand slides even further into the black, shimmering with drops of sunrise appendage, the goosebumps steady on his arm and most of his body.

Their link is once again restored, and Sam gasps when memories so long forgotten and repressed break free and spill into his mind.

Lucifer’s hands automatically rest on Sam’s hips, when the hunter grasps his shoulder with the free hand.

“It’s not like you to protect what is defiled,” Michael says. “Have those pagan filth changed you so much, Gabriel?”

“They’ve been my family more so than you’ll ever be,” Gabriel retorts, a cold edge to his words.

Raphael snorts, but doesn’t move otherwise, content to just watch the scene unfold before him.

Michael looks at his brother contemplatively for a few moments. “I thought that letting you follow through with your decision would have opened your eyes. I was wrong.”

“That’s news,” Lucifer speaks up for the first time, pulling everyone’s attention towards him. “Michael making a mistake. I think you’re starting to fall, brother,” he says, confidence in his voice and posture as well as fragments of mockery, the likes of which only Gabriel seems to be able to hear. “It might be in your best interests to make arrangements with our Father for a bigger Cage.”

The change in Lucifer’s demeanor goes unseen by Dean, whose concern is held only by his brother, hopeful that something changed in the meantime. His hope dies a silent death when his brother doesn’t as much as twitch in his bed.

Michael’s serene mask wavers when he meets his brother’s confident stare. It’s been such a long time since he looked at him, let alone have a conversation, that something uncomfortable flutters in his chest, reflected by his grace. He doesn’t let Raphael’s sudden anger and disgust rub off on him, although he is surprised to feel such intense, negative emotions coming from his brother.

Lucifer might have created ruptures within Heaven with his rebellion. Ruptures that continue reverberating through each and every human being to this day. But deep down, Michael still hopes.

It’s squashed and muted to the point of nonexistence, but it’s there, flaring to life at the sight of Lucifer. Such defiance still present within the clear blue eyes, etched seamlessly in his grace, a proud, deliberate fluctuation. But more tamed than when they first clashed swords. He might be wrong, but it doesn’t feel arrogant and uncaring, much like it had been the situation back then.

“Lucifer,” Michael intones cordially, eyes calculating. “It’s been a long time since we--”

“Clashed swords. It has,” Lucifer finishes the sentence, faded bitterness still present in his voice.

“If you want to put it that way…”

“Oh, please,” Gabriel interrupts his brother, rolling his eyes. “Fake civility will get you nowhere right now. Drop the act, Michael.”

“Gabriel,” Lucifer utters, tone almost chiding.

“Is he alright?” Gabriel asks instead, ignoring the fact that he feels like a child interrupting the grown-ups’ discussion.

“On his way there,” Lucifer answers, an enigmatic smile on his lips, even if Gabriel can’t see it right now.

Michael picks up on the subject of the conversation. “I see your soul is still sleeping.”

Lucifer tips his head slightly to one side, as if mulling over something. “You might want to explain why has he been imprisoned unjustly upon my release.”

“To teach you a lesson.”

Gabriel rolls his eyes again, sarcasm dripping gallons when he speaks. “Of course, why should He ever do something without imparting lessons left and right?”

Raphael’s eyes flash with ire at Gabriel. “Be careful how you speak of our Father,  Gabriel,” he warns, tone heavy with unspoken words.

The Trickster’s attention snaps up to his brother, surprise disrupting his concentration for a moment, before a sneer pulls at his lips.

“And you should be careful who you threaten,” Gabriel retorts, coldly.

“I don’t want to fight you, Lucifer,” Michael speaks up.

Lucifer glances at the archangel blade already materialized into Raphael’s left hand. “It seems Raphael has other ideas.”

“Raphael,” Michael says commandingly, and the archangel reluctantly lets his sword return back to its place.

“Why are you here, then, if not to fight me?” Lucifer focuses his attention once again on his brother.

“Father’s Word.”

That makes Castiel’s eyes snap up at Michael. “God is back?” he asks, hope and disbelief mixed in his voice and expression.

Michael’s eyes are reluctant to leave Lucifer’s, but he has to look at the creature whose presence he ignored upon his arrival.

“Castiel.” Michael recognizes him. “One of Heaven’s generals, sent to earth with the sole purpose of rising the Righteous Man from perdition,” he recounts, attention lazily gliding towards the Righteous Man in question, a step behind the angel.

Dean fidgets slightly where he stands, Michael’s unwavering gaze too much to take at once.

“Dean.” Michael smiles. Though small, the smile is warm and reassuring, and some of the tension leaves Dean’s body.

“Is God back?” Castiel asks again, this time an urgent note to his tone, unhindered hope making his eyes shimmer.

Gabriel gives him a sidelong glance, sympathy slightly creasing his brow.

Michael is silent for a moment, studying the warrior’s face, debating whether he should tell him or not.

“His whereabouts are still unknown,” he finally says and watches as the hope fades slowly from the general’s eyes.

Despite his reputation of being stern and unmoving in his decisions, he does not enjoy seeing how his warrior’s faith in his Father dwindles a little bit more. It’s truly sad to see it happen, especially since that’s the driving force of an angel. Faith. Hope. He knows, it feels like dying inside, unable to impede the downfall.

“What’s happening to my brother?” Dean asks, words coming out steady and confident, taking advantage of the unusual silence around. He’s looking Michael straight into the eye, oddly courageous, when the slight tremor in his joints tells another story.

Michael takes a moment to study Dean with that unnerving gaze with which Cas usually looks at him. “He’s adjusting to the sudden influx of grace coming from my brother.”

Gabriel’s and Lucifer’s head snap up at once. That’s news for them, although Lucifer suspected something like that for a while now.

“When’s he waking up?” Dean looks at Sam; still no response.

Michael takes his time, gaze meeting Lucifer’s, then Gabriel’s and finally landing on Sam. He studies the human’s body for a bit, seeing what Dean most certainly cannot. How the new grace infused into his body is fighting with the old one, trying to dominate it and tone it down to a manageable thrum. Its assonance is repulsing to Michael, used to hear only concordance and melodious notes.

“Not long.”

“So what’s your gig?” Dean asks.

Michael’s bemusement should be funny, if the situation wasn’t so serious.

“Why did Father send you here?” Lucifer clarifies, curious about the answer probably more than the others.

“To oversee that Sam does not become a Nephilim,” Michael answers calmly, seeing from his peripheral vision the moment the bright, new grace subdues the muted white, old one.

It’s truly a sight to behold. He’s never seen a ‘fight’ for dominance between two parts of the same grace. It has a certain wild, human trait to it, but also a grotesque elegance like a passionate, brutal dance humans seem to like. Fortunately, Lucifer’s steady rhythm managed to overwhelm his old grace.

Gabriel almost chokes on his own breath. “Nephilim?! I think you missed a lesson or two about how those are created.”

Michael narrows his eyes. “I do, certainly, know that it requires the act of mating between a human and an angel,” he says placidly. “However, this is different. And more dangerous.”

“And why is that?”

“Since Lucifer has been imprisoned in the Cage before Sam started his human cycle, there has been no one who could regulate the waves of grace in his soul. Not even you, Gabriel.” Lucifer’s gaze snaps up to Gabriel, even if the younger archangel is a couple of steps in front of him.

“As similar to Lucifer’s as your grace is, you couldn’t manage to control the one in Sam’s soul,” he continues, catching on the fact that Lucifer knew nothing about Gabriel’s attempts at helping Sam the first cycles he’s been human. “He’s been going millennia without Lucifer’s guiding presence, so that little amount of grace is distorted and… well, unruly,” he explains, then looks at Lucifer. “You did touch him with your wings, didn’t you?” he asks, and Lucifer knows that Michael is aware of his visits into Sam’s dreams.

Lucifer’s head dips slightly, the only gesture of acknowledgement he’ll give to his brother.

“Then you’ve already re-established the connection. It’ll take time for your grace to put in order the one that’s been interlaced with the soul.”

“I don’t buy it,” Gabriel intervenes. “Hours ago you were asking me to stop Lucifer and now you offer help and guidance to him?”

“It is in our best interests to impede a catastrophe.”

“You’re not touching Sam,” Lucifer says firmly, and the clouds rumble ominously, as if reflecting the archangel’s threat.

Michael smiles patronizingly. “Should the need arise, you won’t have much of a choice. It’ll take time and more than your feeble connection to calm down the grace that’s in his soul,” he retorts.

“We can never know if Sam will become a Nephilim or not until he wakes up,” Gabriel says, eyes narrowed. “Better lay down, Mikey.”

“Threatening your brother, Gabriel?”

“If needs must,” he replies, his vessel’s muscles pulled taut.

The rumble gets more louder and quicker, manipulated by the amount of tension pulsing in waves among them. The tip of Gabriel’s sword peeks in his palm, its weight familiar and comfortable, ready to strike should there be a need for violence.

The humid, earthy breeze reminds him of the many battles he’s fought at a time he was still an archangel, still a soldier of heaven, combating hoards of demons at once. The only difference here is that Michael’s a worthy opponent and the victory isn’t within either one’s reach.

Lucifer’s cold anger ripples through Gabriel’s grace, reminding him that he’s not alone in this battle. He’ll fight as much as Gabriel is ready to, without a second thought. It calms the younger archangel somewhat, knowing that he has an ally in all this.

He finds himself oddly faithful in Lucifer right here and now. It’s a matter of trust, he’s aware.

The four archangels are caught in a staring match, air taut like a leash stretched too much, for too long, ready to snap at a moment’s notice. Even Castiel is tense at Dean’s side and he can’t help but soak up all that tension, white knuckles the only sign his fist tightened around Ruby’s knife.

Above head, the clouds become still and silent much like the creatures beneath, although they remain unusually dark and pregnant with unshed tears.

No other words are spoken between the angels, most probably relying on their inhuman senses to continue the conversation, something Dean is obviously not privy to. He searches their body language, hoping to find out where will the ‘bomb’ go off before it actually happens. But at the moment he has no clue whatsoever, because of course he’s not dealing with breathing, red blooded humans, who have a damn hard time impersonating statues.

It’s never that easy in his line of job.

Lucifer’s the first one to break the eye contact, his attention suddenly pulled away by Sam’s cage. No later than that and the symbols freeze over one by one, and only when the last is but a hieroglyph of ice do they crumble into white, glistening specks, before disappearing into nothingness.

A blinding light erupts from within the former cage, forcing Dean to cover his eyes.

Neither angel looks elsewhere as Sam is lifted in the air, two cerulean, sprinckled with white streaks of light materialize themselves almost shyly from Sam’s back, twisting and turning like the ends of a ribbon caught in the wind. Castiel’s eyes widen with surprise and understanding, before Sam is gently placed at the foot of the bed and the blinding light disperses.

Sam’s there when Dean opens his eyes. Whole, a little dazed, but as healthy and unharmed as he could possibly wish for his little brother.

Without a second thought he dashes towards Sam, enveloping him into a bone-crushing hug.

“Dean!” Sam breathes out, hugging his brother back with the same force and unspoken feelings.

He opens his eyes, just as his brother mumbles something in his jacket, and takes in first Lucifer, then Gabriel and Castiel, and before he looks at the other two archangels (he knows who they are, even before laying eyes on them) the ripping sound of something heavy and woody breaks the silence and an old-looking tree comes speeding towards Michael and Raphael.

But they’re fast, flying a couple of feet to the left and the tree doesn’t collide with the two like it left the impression it would, instead it collapses on the ground and rolls a few metres, before stopping a couple of steps before Lucifer and Gabriel.

“What the hell?” Dean says as he turns to see what all the commotion is about. He looks dumbfounded at the tree on the ground, trying to make heads and tails of how it got there.

Sam is more shocked than he lets on his face and the twisting feeling in his gut doesn’t cease to nag him.

“It’s more unpredictable than you thought, Mi--” Raphael doesn’t get the chance to finish the sentence as Sam’s former bed flies towards them.

Lucifer ignores his two brothers as they relocate somewhere closer to Castiel, and focuses his attention on Sam.

“Sam,” he says as soothingly as he can channel his true voice through a human’s vocal chords. The younger hunter looks at him, fear in his eyes, but Dean blocks most of his view of Sam when Lucifer takes a step towards him. “It’s okay, Sam.”

“Not another step,” Dean warns, a defensive air about him.

Lucifer ignores him, too, maintaining the eye contact with Sam, but he ceases to approach them.

“Kiddo, it’s alright,” Gabriel says, and Sam looks at him almost instantly; there’s a reassuring smile on Gabriel’s lips, but Sam doesn’t register it. “Nobody’s gonna harm you.”

“He’s like a ticking bomb,” Raphael bites out with anger and maybe an ounce of fear.

Michael has time to grab his brother’s jacket lapel and pull him in the opposite direction, before the ground explodes as if there was a hidden mine beneath their feet all this time. The pieces of earth fly everywhere, but fortunately nobody is within the range of the falling dirt and gravel.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Who’s ready to explode?” Dean demands angrily, looking at the two archangels now on his and Sam’s side.

“Sam is,” Castiel says, face stoic as ever, although his eyes are searching Sam as if he could figure out the answer to a difficult riddle.

“What?!” Both Winchesters say at the same time and the never-’til-now thunders strike the air above their heads dramatically, making the brothers flinch, unprepared for the acute sound.

“Lucifer,” Michael says and he blocks a big mould of earth a few feet behind him; it crumbles to pieces as if it encountered an invisible wall in its wake. “Steady the flow before it’s too late.”

“I warn you,” Dean tells Lucifer when he starts for them again, “if you make another--”

“Dean-o, Lucifer’s the only one who can put a stop to this and prevent your bro from going ballistic.”

“What?” Shock and bewilderment fills the hunter’s features. “You’re joking!”

“Am not.”

Dean looks helpless to his angel. “Cas--”

“It’s true, Dean. You have to let Lucifer calm down the grace.”

Dean presses his lips together, fists bloodless at his side, before reluctantly stepping to the side.

“Dean? Dean, what are you doing? What is happening?” Sam asks, taking a step back as Lucifer comes closer and closer, his eyes never wavering from the hunter’s face.

The wind picks up quickly and the thunders roll more vigorously now, with more ferocity as if they’ll be able to stop Lucifer from approaching Sam. He’s freaking out like he never had before in his entire life. There’s an irrational terror freezing the blood in his veins, even as his heart beats with such power and desperation that it could break free from the cage of his ribs and run away.

The moment Lucifer’s hand touches the center of his chest, everything stops. More importantly, everything in Sam pauses, from the beating heart to the mad rush of blood in his veins, to the buzzing of thoughts in his brains and the violent shaking of his joints. He sees without looking at the things around them, leaves frozen in air, thunders caught as they light the dark clouds like in a photo, the people around them still as statues, and all the while his eyes cannot - have not - the power to break the eye contact with Lucifer’s calm, Arctic ones.

When he releases the breath he’s been holding as if someone punched it out of him, the world around them kicks into motion again.

Sam’s entire body is numb but for the place where Lucifer’s hand rests. There he feels warmth and cold as it seeps entwined in him, creating waves of high and low temperatures which calms the storm inside him gradually; a perfect, soundless lullaby only something deep within him seems attuned to.

The clouds fall silent and disperse into the night’s air, just as the wind dies away to a sleepy breeze. One by one, the forest’s occupants make their voices be heard and soon all the tension ebbs away.

Sam’s eyelids start drooping and his eyes fall on his hand, now just resting over Lucifer’s. He knows he should deem it weird at the very least, he has no recollection of making the conscious move to place it there, but right now his every emotion feels like it’s in a trance, still awake, but their intensity completely frozen.

“We’ll be back,” Michael announces before both him and Raphael disappear with a flutter of wings.

“We better get our Sambo here somewhere comfy where he can lay down his weary head.”

Sam has time to take in Gabriel’s smirk and Lucifer’s tiny, fond one as he feels familiar hands and something that resembles to “I gotcha, Sammy,” whispered to his cheek, before everything dissolves into a blur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the overlapping of the dream-scene and the story present-scene has not been confusing.  
> When I first wrote that first part of the scene, I didn't even realize what I was doing, until i later came back to proof read it. I think the literary strategy intrigued me more than I thought it would, because the first time I saw it employed in a fic, was when I've read both [Elysium](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2217507/chapters/4862694/) and [Rescues](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2340413/chapters/5159402/), Hannigram fics. So credit where it's due. If you're also a Hannigram fan, you should check those works as well (if you haven't already). One is dark with fluff, the other is fluff with angst XD


	5. Chapter 5

_Sam_.

The first thought, upon opening his eyes and seeing Lucifer, is _hungry_. Despite the fact that he has no recollection of the man at the side of the bed, he knows who the person is. Or the entity that’s inhabiting that human. Surprisingly, that doesn’t set off any alarms in his mind.

“Hello, Sam,” Lucifer says with a fond smile, but the greeting falls unregistered, which is funny.

He sees him. His brain is aware of _his_ presence and not anyone else’s that might pass as friendly through his friend-or-foe filter. The person his eyes take in is the Devil in flesh and bone. Surely it is funny, because he doesn’t panic, doesn’t bolt straight up to the opposite side of the room, as far away from him as it is possible.

No.

He just locks his gaze upon him and feels -- calm. Strangely peaceful, as if this is how it’s supposed to be. This is _right_ in all the ways the past Sam would think are so thoroughly _wrong_ he’d slap himself hard right where he lies.

His right hand twitches and, slowly, he retakes possession of his own body with an acute awareness of his every nerve ending, the slow reconnection with his brain. It makes Sam feel a bit dopey, since he never had to deal with so much information coming from his body alone. Muscles moving, shifting against each other at his tiniest motion, blood pumping oxygen into multiple parts of his body, synapses forming bonds with different nerve cells and much more, everything happening in a millisecond.

It’s amazing how many components come into play to realize the barest of movements. But it’s also overwhelming to be aware of all these things out of the blue.

It’s as if he watches the moment another person wakes up, taking in the details, just that right now that’s transmitted on a more deeper level than the sight can reach.

It doesn’t take long before his whole body tingles as if it’s assaulted by an entire army of ants, marching just beneath his skin.

“It will take some time to reacclimatise with your own body.” Lucifer’s voice is pitched low, soothing.

He’s now standing right besides Sam’s bed. Not quite looming over him, just a couple of inches away.

Sam opens his mouth to ask an incredible amount of questions, but what he actually manages is to imitate a fish. No sound takes flight from his lips and he frowns at his inability.

“Don’t, Sammy.” Lucifer’s hand has found its way into his hair, caressing Sam’s forehead passingly; an almost vulnerable expression takes over Lucifer’s features, but he manages somehow to concentrate all of that in his eyes, now more bright than before. “Take it slowly. You don’t have to hurry. Take your time to reaccustom with your own body. The questions can wait until later,” he chants in that lulling voice, never ceasing his caresses.

Sam’s eyes flutter, because let’s be honest, that combination of voice and touch is a win-win. His body stopped feeling invaded by ants. Though, what he feels now is not the mattress on which he is resting, but a whole new level of weird. It feels as if he’s floating, drifting away into the unknown without a care whatsoever.

It’s probably the humming of an unnamed and unheard song that’s playing at the back of his mind that makes him feel a step away from tumbling into the realm of dreams and so _safe_ he actually is astounded that it feels so strange, so new and unexplored.

He continues to drift away, unaware that he’s been put to sleep once again.

His eyes snap open, pupils contracting at the sudden flood of light, a couple of hours later. The dark brown (rotten here and there with inconsequential patches of something darker) structure his eyes lie upon, comes to be associated  as an attic ceiling in his mind. A bad maintained one, for the record.

“Sammy!” The all too familiar face comes into his sight. “Thank _fuck_ you’re all right!”

 _Dean_.

For a good minute, he’s incapable of saying or doing anything. He just drinks in the image of his brother. He missed him.

“Hey there, kiddo!” says another voice and his eyes turn immediately to the opposite side, a playful smile greeting him. Sam starts to rise from the bed, only to have strong, but firm hands stop him barely two inches forward.

“No, Sammy. You need to lie down for a little while more,” Dean says, the worry seeping through his every word.

He doesn’t even try to hide it from his facial expression, which is worrying in and on itself for Sam.

“Damn it, Dean,” Sam crooks, stroking his eyes with the thumb and the index finger of one hand. It feels heavy, as if while he was out it turned into a block of cement. “I feel alright.” His voice is gruffer than he remembers it to be. He might start to rival Cas’ if it doesn’t get better with use. “Just a bit heavy limbed. Why do I have the impression that I was close to become one with the bed?”

“I knew you had a princess streak in you somewhere deep down, but Sleeping Beauty, Sammy? Really?” Dean’s attempt at a joke receives a weak smile from his brother as he experimentally moves every limb to get used to his body once again.

“What happened?” He doesn’t even know if he wants to hear the answer to that, but the question is out.

“It’s a long story, kiddo,” Gabriel intercedes helpfully when Dean’s contorted face tells him he doesn’t even know where to start from. “Better not worry your little noggin’ for now,” he winks at Sam which makes Sam roll his eyes.

Dean's cell phone rings a few moments afterwards and Dean silently curses, taking a couple of steps towards the reclined window to answer whoever disturbed him.

Memories seep into Gabriel’s mind as he looks at Sam, at how bright and peaceful his soul is. After all, he took care of it for a long time after Lucifer's Fall. He was familiar with the low thrum it dispersed, very much similar to his brother’s before he was stripped of that privilege.

Now, for Gabriel, it’s a bittersweet memory, because what Sam’s soul retains is just an echo of an echo of the original melody. And Lucifer was by far the most melodious one among them.

Another thing only archangels are able to pick up in a soul is the specter of light it can radiate. Sam's is truly wonderful and awe-inspiring. A multitude of colours and shades, not even humans know about. Gabriel remembered how he hadn't been able to keep from staring at him for long spans of time back when Gabriel was still a part of the Host.

Now that he looks at Sam, there’s no shadow of doubt what lies within his brother’s core. Lucifer had truly poured all his love into the making of Sam’s soul. Probably every last crumb of love he had towards the Universe in general.

When Dean's call finishes, a grim, but resigned expression is etched onto his face. He has to step out for a couple of hours because apparently, Garth stumbled upon two Wendingos north from where they were and needed help. Neither Sam nor Gabriel break the eye contact, but the older Winchester is too caught up in his thoughts to pay them any mind.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?” Gabriel asks, after the door closes behind Dean.

Sam opens his mouth, but closes it, frowning bewildered.

“I know you,” he states, ignoring Gabriel’s question. His frown deepens, because that was not what he wanted to say.

Gabriel is taken aback for a moment, before smoothly schooling his features back in place.

“Of course you do.” He smirks cheekily. “Trickster ringing any bell?”

“No.” Sam shakes his head slightly, closing his eyes for a second and searching his memory, before opening them again. “Before then. Long… long before.” He finishes weakly, confused as to what he was trying to say.

Gabriel knows what Sam’s talking about, but he isn’t sure if he’s supposed to tell him the truth. It’s a delicate situation and his vow to Lucifer before his Fall hasn’t been forgotten. He remembers it as if he spoke those words seconds ago.

Gabriel straightens, his eyes raking over Sam’s body, and for a short second Sam has the distinct urge to cover himself up with something, _anything_ , because he’ll be damned, but he hasn’t ever been in the position to be the subject of such an intense scrutiny.

The archangel opens his mouth, seemingly to say something, but then he freezes. Literally. He goes still for a long moment, his eyes distant, _lifeless_ , before returning to himself, the ever-present glint in his eyes firing up again.

“What happened?” Sam’s voice is still raspy.

Gabriel doesn’t answer him, instead he disappears into thin air and the room falls quiet.

No. _Really_ quiet.

Sam wasn’t even aware that there was a background noise filling the attic. Well, not entirely noise. It was something resembling a hum. It comforted Sam on an unconscious level, because it reminded him of something. Something ancient. Something warm and wonderful. Something familiar that his mind doesn’t remember, but he _knows_ it is a memory.

It’s in him, somewhere.

-ooo-

_Luci, brother, where are you hiding?_

As if hiding was something he ever did.

He feels a passing degree of frustration at being disturbed from his reverie, but there’s nothing he can do to stop his brother. Especially him. But then, again, he was the one that called Gabriel over.

He lets his true voice sing a line from an ancient song in Enochian he used to sing every dawn since the creation of Earth (until he was imprisoned in his Cage, that is). That’s the only trail he’ll give Gabriel to guide him there. He’s already close by anyway (in the near confining state), so probably it won’t be hard to follow.

“I didn’t think you would remember that song.” Gabriel appears a few feet away from Lucifer.

The Light Bearer doesn’t turn to look at him. He doesn’t need his eyes to feel the familiar grace fluctuating around them. It’s a soothing feeling he revels in right now. Even if Gabriel hasn’t been to Heaven since a long time ago, this is as close to his old home as he’ll ever be. He just knows.

“The song was my creation. I doubt I’ll ever forget something _I_ created,” he says coolly.

Gabriel’s eyes flash with something indescribable; something not unlike an archangel. Old, tired, _sad_ ; the same flash he had when his big brother had entrusted Sam to his care while he was falling.

Lucifer doesn’t have to look at him to know his little brother is on track with all the underlying messages he could infuse into a simple answer.

“Why are you so far from Sam when he’s just been released?” Gabriel asks, curious about Lucifer’s sudden change in attitude.

Lucifer turns his head towards him, and the Trickster is half compelled to take a step back; that’s how intense Lucifer’s gaze is. There are a good couple of steps between the two, but the distance isn’t reassuring. Not when their graces are perilously close to touching one another on the spiritual plane.

“He’s ready, little Gabriel,” he says, and Gabriel bristles at the use of the diminutive; it’s been too long since he was called that. “He’s finally found the perfect human shape and is calling me to him. I can hear him.”

Gabriel’s eyes widen minutely. “Is it… time… for… “ For the first time, Gabriel isn’t able to form a coherent sentence. He looks stricken, his face ashen.

Lucifer watches in sympathy as the color fades from his brother’s face.

“Yes.”

A moment.

“That’s why you were released from your Cage,” he says, understanding brightening his dull brown. “He is ready to fulfill that which Father… predicted.” His voice dies to a whisper.

The truth of his words sinks even deeper when Lucifer acknowledges everything with a small nod.

“But his grace is not completely synched with yours,” he argues. “Don’t you think there might be some complications?” Gabriel frowns, trying to think logically about this. Lucifer waits calmly for his brother to continue; he can see the wheels working furiously in his mind. It’s almost adorable to look at. “Human Sam is different from the soul you remember.”

Lucifer smiles indulgently. “It will take some time for the pieces to click in place, I’m aware of that,” he admits.

When it becomes obvious that Lucifer won’t continue, he sighs defeated. He hoped his brother would have changed his mind, if the broken look he had during Sam’s imprisonment is anything to go by. It wasn’t fake, that he is sure of, but he can’t quite stop himself from feeling betrayed. Again.

Lucifer’s grace touches Gabriel’s in a short caress. “I’m not betraying you, Gabriel. This is just a continuation from where I’ve been interrupted.”

Gabriel can’t hide the hurt and sadness from his expression as he looks up at his brother. “Why can’t you leave it be?” he asks, a note above a whisper. “You have Sam back now. You’re complete. Why--”

“You know Michael won’t sit idly and let me roam free,” Lucifer interrupts. “He’s stubborn like that. And yes, I am too,” he adds when Gabriel opens his mouth, clearly intent on pointing that little fact out. “Father made us too alike.” Lucifer averts his gaze elsewhere.

Gabriel’s grace pushes gently back like a selfish puppy who didn’t have enough belly rubs and scratches behind the ears, when Lucifer seems to close up on him. He doesn’t want to lose the small crack his brother opened for him.

“That’s not true, and you know it,” Gabriel says, a determined look in his eyes. “Father couldn’t have made you more different.”

Lucifer smiles wanly at his brother’s argument. A stray memory of a younger and much more inexperienced Gabriel overlaps the one he has before him, vessel notwithstanding. A flash of pride and sadness ripples through his grace. It’s too small for Gabriel to pick up on it, though.

“We’re alike where it shouldn’t matter,” he concedes and Gabriel frowns deeply, clearly dissatisfied with Lucifer’s answer. “It’s inevitable. Just like Father wanted.”

Gabriel’s grace lashes with anger without touching Lucifer’s. “But you can stop. You can choose not to fight Michael.”

“Would he understand, then?” Lucifer asks.

No, he wouldn’t. Michael seems to speak the language of war better than Enochian or the mortal’s languages. It frustrates Gabriel to not be able to find middle ground between his older brothers. By now, he’s certain that Lucifer doesn’t want to fight Michael more than he wants to leave Sam alone. He knows it, he recognizes the twitchy pattern of his grace, because his is the same. Maybe more obvious than the almost undetectable hiccup in Lucifer’s grace.

It’s the pattern of apprehension. He can’t wait to get back to Sam and help him put stability to his life and inner turmoil.

“What about Sam?”

Lucifer looks away. “He’s safe with you and Castiel.”

“You know what I mean,” Gabriel presses on.

Lucifer’s mouth twitches as if he barely caught himself before smirking. “He’ll come around.”

“You felt it, didn’t you?” he asks, taking a step forward almost unconsciously. “He’s confused by what his soul is telling him and what he feels about this situation.”

“Yes, I know. He’s sorting out through the memories I’ve let unbidden in his mind.”

“You… what?!” He goes still.

“I didn’t mean to,” Lucifer says, “but he allowed my wings to manifest in his dream. I was too caught up in the fact that his desire to touch my wings broke through the cage to put some barriers up.”

“Kinky,” Gabriel can’t help but say, pulling another twitch of mouth from Lucifer.

“The direct contact with my grace must have unlocked his soul’s memories. By the time I realized it was too late.”

“So that’s the reason why he recognized me,” Gabriel murmurs, more to himself than to his brother. He feels a shift in Lucifer’s grace and looks up at him. “Well, he’s not sure of it. He suspects. You called me just as he started to ask more questions.”

Lucifer hums noncommittally. “It’s better for Sam if you keep the information at a minimum.”

Gabriel snorts. “Tough job, that. Dean and Cassie won’t stay put until they’ll have everything laid before them in detail.”

Lucifer raises an eyebrow as if the mention of the hunter and his angel aren’t related to the situation.

“You give me that look, but you don’t know how stubborn Cassie can be.” He chuckles.

Lucifer turns his back to his brother, but not before Gabriel catches him smirking.

“Runs in the family.”

Gabriel smirks at the soft-spoken words, deciding it’s time to return to the hunters.

-ooo-

Sam could stand and move on his own in a couple of hours, after he did some simple warming-up exercises. Well, he wasn’t able to walk at his normal speed, just some degrees slower, so he was still vulnerable.

The house (apparently a penthouse somewhere in Louisiana) had both angel and demon warding.

He told Dean to let him practice alone after he came back from the hunt and caught Sam stretching his long limbs and wincing every now and then. His brother seemed torn between staying and helping him, and getting out of there as soon as possible. In the end, Dean chose to flee the room with a mumbled excuse the younger Winchester didn’t understand and a “Shout, if you need me”.

He’s slightly unsteady on his feet when he gets to the door, and when he opens it and takes a couple more steps he stops abruptly.

Stairs.

Wooden stairs.

A long sigh leaves his lips as he mentally and physically prepares to take on the challenge. He’d be laughing at himself for thinking that some simple stairs could present such a difficult challenge, if he weren’t in the situation he is in right now.

He doesn’t descend the stairs one at a time like a toddler who recently got the permission to do it without the help of either of his parents would, but he is achingly close by.

“You’re up.”

He stops three steps away from reaching the ground and slowly looks up. He takes in the familiar trench coat their angel always wears, the blue tie and white shirt, stubbly jaw, plump, faded pink lips and finally he stops at Cas’ baby blues. The angel stares at Sam as intensely as every angel (or archangel) they’d ever met.

Sam nods. “Yes, I am.”

“Do you need any help?” Cas asks, eyes intent on Sam.

Sam shakes his head. “No, thanks. I can manage,” he smiles a little.

“Hey, there, Sleeping Beauty.” Comes Dean’s voice and Sam turns to look at him, as he’s meddling with something in the kitchen. “Ready to stave off your hunger? I don’t know how you slept for almost three days straight. I’d have woke up just for missing one lunch.”

 _Hunger_.

He is hungry, but for something else, and he’s incapable of explaining to himself _what_ exactly.

A flutter of wings interrupts Sam’s response.

“Glad to see you’re out and about, Samsquatch.” Gabriel says by way of greeting, already seated on a chair at the table.

Sam arches a questioning eyebrow at the archangel, trying to convey the need for answers, but Gabriel either doesn’t see it or he blatantly ignores it. Instead, he digs into a couple of pancakes, making obscene sounds as he chews on the sinfully delicious breakfast.

“I’m almost sorry for making you die so many times, Dean-o,” Gabriel says around a mouthful of pancakes.

Dean grumbles something like _snark_ and _too early_ from where he fiddles with the two pans on the stove.

Sam sits down gingerly opposite Gabriel. Castiel is already seated next to his brother, which leaves only one more seat, next to Sam’s right. He’s still staring at Gabriel as he ploughs on more pancakes than a normal human being could stomach, without the archangel seemingly being aware of it.

He doesn’t registers when Dean places a plate with a double portion of bacon and two eggs in front of him. Neither when he sits down besides him.

What he does register is, “What’s with the staring?”

“What?” Sam snaps out of it and looks at his brother, then at Castiel, who doesn’t avert his gaze. Sam frowns. “Is something wrong, Cas?”

“No,” he replies, clipped. “Your soul seems to be in confusion.”

Gabriel swallows and freezes with his fork midway to his mouth. _Leave it_ , he sends towards Castiel.

 _Why?_ Cas asks, his expression never faltering.

 _Because it’s more complicated than he can handle right now_ , Gabriel sends back and resumes eating, although more slowly.

“What do you mean with that?” Sam asks Castiel.

“Nothing,” he says. “I must have been mistaken.” Dean tenses at his side.

He glances sideways at his brother. He’s either carefully avoiding making eye contact with Sam or Dean’s oblivious to Sam’s intense stare. Either way, he seems to like devoting his full attention to his eggs and bacon more than to the other occupants of the table -- little brother included.

Defeated, Sam starts eating his breakfast, discovering along the way that he’s more than a little hungry. He actually finishes before Dean, so he gets up and dumps his plate and cutlery into the sink for later to be washed.

“Alright, I’m gonna need to run into town for supplies,” Dean announces as he stands with his empty plate in one hand.

“I’m coming with you,” Sam finds himself saying. The house must be pretty old, if he can hear the occasional creeks here and there in the following silence.

He’s receiving various degrees of perplexed expressions from around the table. Okay, now. When did it become so strange to want to go with his brother?

Dean is the first one to snap out of it. “Okay. Go get pretty, Amy Dunne.”

Sam looks at him as if he’s sprouted another head. “You…” He shakes his head in resignation and goes upstairs, where supposedly his duffel bag has emigrated.

-ooo-

“Alright, Goldilocks, spill it,” Dean says, leveling a no-nonsense look at Gabriel, after Sam shuts the door to his room.

The archangel lifts an unimpressed eyebrow at the hunter, but doesn’t say anything for a while. He finished eating awhile ago.

 _Dean has a right to know_ , Castiel tells him.

 _Says who?_ Gabriel shots back, petulantly.

_Sam’s his brother, Gabriel. He’s worried about him. You owe him at least an explanation._

_I owe him nothing_ , Gabriel grunts out, but then releases a long, suffering sigh.

He looks at the hunter contemplatively, trying to gauge what he should and shouldn’t tell him.

“Our Sleeping Beauty has a difficult time adjusting to the… uh… new situation,” he says at last.

“Meaning what? He needs to be warded against angels?”

“You could try that, and you’ll be successful. Me, Cassie, Michael, Raphael and every other angel won’t be able to find your brother.” He smirks. “Except Lucifer.”

A muscle on Dean’s jaw twitches. “Is it because of that grace that’s still inside him?” he asks through clenched teeth.

“Well, well, at long last someone shone a ray of light upon your impaired judgement,” Gabriel comments, still smirking.

“How do we get rid of it?” Gabriel’s smile fades.

“You can’t. It’s now a part of Sam. Take it out and Sambo will die.”

“Crap.”

“The sooner you make peace with the fact that Sam belongs to Lucifer, the better you’ll be.”

Dean’s fist connects with the table, making the plates still there clatter from the impact. “Sam belongs to no one but himself!” he declares, determination burning in his features.

Gabriel regards him for some time. “Everybody belongs to somebody at some point in time. Just like you belong to Cassie here.” That throws Dean off his loop and he leans back, jaw working furiously.

It doesn’t escape Gabriel’s attention when Dean glances quickly at the angel in question. Ultimately, he sighs defeated.

“What’s Lucifer waiting, then? If Sammy belongs to him, how come he’s not lounging in our living room? Or… all over him?” He grimaces at the last one.

Gabriel’s face darkens. “Michael.” The word is ushered out like a dead weight. “He won’t allow Lucifer to settle down on earth. Not even when his soul is calling him.”

“His soul does what?” Dean asks incredulously.

This time, Gabriel sighs. “Sam’s soul is emitting notes. I can hear them loud and clear, because I’ve been…” he stops abruptly; that’s a piece of information he’s not ready to spill out just yet. “Anyway, even if the notes are distorted and he’s a long way from creating a melodious song, Lucifer still recognizes his song’s pattern. For us, archangels, is torture to hear it and not be with our souls.” He looks up at Dean.

“Now imagine millenia imprisoned in a cage and still being able to hear the sweet notes of a song that evokes memories of home, of belonging and love. How would that make you feel, Dean? Because I have to admit, I’d go insane.”

Dean swallows, and when he speaks up, his voice wavers ever so slightly, betraying the impact Gabriel’s words have had on him. “What makes you think he’s not already insane?”

“Because I know him. I grew up into a full-fledged archangel under his attention and care. He gifted love openly to his brothers and sisters, he was always there for whomever needed him.”

“It’s your word against the facts. It’s his fault Sam’s the way he is now.”

The intensity with which Gabriel looks at Dean puts a hitch into Dean’s breathing.

“When Dad says something, it always happens, regardless of your ideals or Fate or whatever you believe in.” There’s a strange ring to Gabriel’s voice, dark and rich, vocals almost fusing with each other, as if with each word, layers upon layers are being shed off to reveal his true voice.

“Oh, so now’s God’s fault for Lucifer going rebel on you?”

As soon as the words leave Dean’s mouth the walls start shaking more and more violently by the second. Dean and Gabriel are locked in a staring match and a light is rising in the archangel’s eyes.

“Dean,” Sam says, voice strained and hard as steel. Belatedly, Gabriel realizes Castiel called his name more than once.

What Sam’s seeing on Dean’s face is stubborn defiance, matched inch by inch by Gabriel’s approaching anger. Sam has no need for another disaster in his life so he places his hand on Dean’s shoulder, shaking him out of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some things happening in my life right now that require my attention. The next chapter is half written, but I don't know when I'll be able to finish it. just a heads up if I'm late to update this story (more late than with this chapter).


	6. Chapter 6

The ride to the gas station’s store is soaked wet in a tensed silence. Sam can feel it gliding lazily in the confined space of the Impala. He’s almost compelled to roll down the window just to get lightheaded on the fresh air -- that’s how much he feels it. Each ticking second, each passing minute is pulled taut by the feeling that every moment now Dean will unload everything he’s holding tight inside him.

His brother. A ticking bomb. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt this terrified.

When Sam finally untwists his pants and works up the courage to say something just to get rid of the horrible silence, he catches the rapid movement Dean’s head did in his direction.

“You okay?” Sam doesn’t pick up any strain, anger or other bad feeling from this question, even if the tension didn’t up and disappear.

He chances a quick glance towards his big brother, mentally measuring and testing the possible answers he can give to Dean that aren’t flat out lies or boggling honest. With his brother in this state is better to settle for half truths.

“I’m managing,” he says after a minute. “Still feel odd in my own skin, like I’ve put on my old clothes and they’re tight in all the wrong places, but I guess I’m... good.”

Dean takes his eyes off the road to study his little brother for any tell tales he’s not speaking the truth. Sam was expecting that reaction. He was actually counting on it, which is good, because he manages to put forth as much honesty in his expression as he can muster right now almost half a day since he woke up from that crazy-induced sleep.

“Good,” Dean says, seemingly satisfied with whatever he sees on Sam’s face.

The tension in the silence that follows lessens up a bit. He counts it as progress.

“Are we gonna talk about what’s been happening lately?” Sam can’t help but ask; he couldn’t find a gentler way of putting this. Better out than in, right?

“What? You mean you dropping in the middle of a hunt, Gabriel putting you in a cube and friggin’ Satan guarding you like a Pitbull?” Dean asks back, bitter sarcasm laden in each word; if Sam thought that was his brother at the peak of sarcasm, then he wasn’t prepared for the oncoming, “or you suddenly being joined at the hip with said friggin’ Satan-slash-Pitbull because he apparently helped create your soul?”

“What?!” His eyes actually hurt for the strain he puts on them as he tries to widen them more than it is humanly possible. He might have been worried about them popping out of his sockets at some point, but that seems to be a faraway, minuscule problem when his mind processes the implication of Dean’s last words.

“ _Fuck_ ,” his brother mutters, eyes trained hard on the road in front of him, even as Sam is boring holes in the side of his head.

Dean’s jaw clenches, a small vein visible for a moment, before he forces himself to relax. A small sigh escapes his slightly parted lips, but he doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes.

“You…” He stops, wetting his lips; from the look of it, Dean is having a hard time coaxing the load of information he knows about this fucked up situation into a simple sentence -- or two. “From what Gabriel told us, God allowed the four archangels to help Him create the souls that were coming into existence at the time. You were assigned to Lucifer, it seems.”

A disbelieving sigh is pushed out of Sam’s mouth as he stares unseeing at the Impala’s board. That is something his mind is having a damn hard time wrapping itself around. He doesn’t even know how to _pick_ this information, _what_ to poke it with, _how_ to chew it. He is reluctant to get anywhere even _near_ it, for fear that it might explode in his face -- or something.

“What does that…” His mouth thinks to function without him, because he takes a deep breath, catching up with the thought that his mind is trying to put actual sounds to, and reformulates it. “How is that relevant to… this?”

Dean looks at him. Quick glances in quick succession.

“You--” he pauses; it doesn’t sound like he’s having a hard time formulating the sentence, but that he’s reluctant in saying what he’s about to say, “have some of his grace mixed in with your soul,” he winces at the end, somehow feeling guilty for even voicing it.

Sam’s mouth workes in vain, because words deserted him like the cowards they are. He absolutely has no idea what to do with this other information. How do you normally answer this? If there’s anything remotely normal with this situation they were shoved into.

“Is there a way to take it out?” he asks just as his right hand comes up to rub at his chest. An unconscious move Dean picks up on rather quickly, but says nothing about.

He shakes his head. “Already asked Gabriel. He said that you’ll die should we try to separate them… you -- whatever.”

From the way he speaks these words, Sam’s sure his brother’s far from happy with that. Sam’s not sure, though, how he’s feeling about having Lucifer’s grace mixed in with his soul. He’s still majorly confused.

“Speaking of Gabriel,” Sam begins slowly, “what was all that staring match just now?”

Dean scoffs. “Just Gabriel being a dick.” Sam doesn’t look convinced by this answer in the slightest.

“Dean, you were talking about me as if I was broken,” he says as calmly as he can.

“You’re not broken, Sammy. It’s these sons of bitches’ fault for meddling where they shouldn’t be meddling,” Dean tells him, suppressed anger in his voice. “I’m starting to get tired of all the shit they’re throwing our way. As if monsters that go bump in the night weren’t enough. Now demons _and_ angels get to have a place in the spotlight, too. Damn douchebags!” He hits the steering wheel.

Sam waits for his brother to calm down his nerves.

“Maybe it’s not entirely their fault, Dean,” Sam tries again. “Maybe God did create this mess--”

“God’s not here, Sam,” Dean says, voice tired as if he’s been repeating this one too many times. “But if he is, he’s doing a fucking great job at dealing with this stuff!”

They lapse into silence after this. Something about this whole conversation rubs Sam the wrong way, unsummoned anger warming his blood up. It doesn’t last much, though. Calm settles deep in his bones, just as suddenly as the anger burned through his veins. Not what he’s used to, but Dean’s already killed the engine so Sam forces the suspicions at the back of his mind as he follows Dean out of the car.

“What do we need?” Sam asks when they enter the gas station store. A swift, automatic glance around the room tells him that it’s only them and the cashier.

“Pie,” Dean answers without hesitation, already on the aisle with different kinds of baked goods.

Sam rolls his eyes at his brother. “Other than that,” he clarifies.

“Everything that lasts more than a day,” he tells Sam, not turning from his inspection of the various flavoured pies he has in front of him.

Sam sighs and goes in search for food that has a suspiciously long expiration date. He normally would argue with that, but right now he can’t be bothered to give it a second thought. He still feels that inner turmoil, and even if his anger has somehow been subdued, the restless, itching feeling that’s making living in his own skin uncomfortable never went away.

Then, there’s the matter of Lucifer and of everything that happened since he woke up in the middle of a forest. He still didn’t manage to make heads and tails of it, because there were too many pieces that didn’t connect in his mind. And so damn many questions. Not to think about the weird dreams he remembers, all of which somehow feature Lucifer.

Why? Is it because he has some of the fallen angel’s grace? Is it that he wants it back so that he can go on with the looming Apocalypse? It’s hard to push back the flare of betrayal and sadness at his own thoughts, because he’s sure that’s what it will boil down to in the end. Lucifer wants more power to win the fight, and probably getting out of the Cage wasn’t an easy feast. He’s running low on juice, that’s it. And Sam’s his reserve.

But he can’t shrug off the feeling of familiarity, of protection and home. Surely he’s going nuts if he’s considering Satan as anything but an enemy, _the_ Enemy. And probably the being who is going to kill him for good this time. Fingers rub at his chest again as his eyes peruse the shelves without acknowledging any brands.

But… he hasn’t harmed Sam in any way since they first meet. If nothing else, Lucifer’s been persisting in getting him out of that weird dreamscape he’s fallen into for reasons still unknown to him. It’s hard to believe that there’s good in Satan, when everything he knows about him tells him otherwise.

Maybe… maybe that’s not all there is to Lucifer. Maybe…

An acute noise, like the one a glass being broken makes, pulls him out from his thoughts. Years of honed hunter instincts resurface and he grabs the handle of Ruby’s knife immediately, turning around to take the situation in.

Dean struggles to get out of the dead choke the cashier caught him in and Sam might give his brother shit for letting his guard down so easily when pie is involved. But that’s for later.

Now he has three bulky men advancing on him on three different aisles, cutting every escape route. His instincts tell him to hurry and help his brother, but the current situation forces him to delay that.

He’s not afraid. There’s no room left for fear, when you deal with monsters. Apparently, the same rule applies when his opponents are plain human.

Or are they?

The men have circled him already, so he backs away until his calf bumps into the dreary products’ shelf. The knife is securely gripped in his right hand, the other clenched into a fist. He surveys the men calmly, trying to assess who’s going to make the first move.

The tension is thick. It prickles down Sam’s spine, awakening his senses like nothing else managed to in a while. Only Dean’s grunts and struggles coat the silence.

A movement at his left catches his attention. It sets him off and before the guy’s foot even touches the ground, Sam’s hauling himself at him, pushing the knife into his stomach. The orangey light flickering in and out underneath his skin puts to rest his suspicions.

Demons.

He doesn’t have time to think further, because a solid body cuts into him like a dull-edged knife, punching the air out from his lungs. He’s propelled against a shelf, effectively pushing it down, products flying everywhere. He groans, eyes closed, because he needs a second or two to reign in the sharp flare of pain from his middle and head. He must have hit his head against the metal shelf, he realizes belatedly.

His right hand closes in on air, but he won’t have time to search for the knife.

“Sammy,” Dean’s raspy, wheezing voice is the only warn he gets before hands grip his light jacket and hauls him to his feet. The room is wobbling alarmingly, but he forces his vision to right itself. There’s no time to dwell on the pain, if he doesn’t want to be beaten to a pulp.

Using his unsteady balance as a ploy to make the man try to right him, he pushes all his body force into him. The guy falls, obviously, but with an added bonus: he bashes his head against the dreary rack, the products toppling off on him in a white, blue and red coloured cascade.

He didn’t forget about the third man, but when he whips around, sucking in a deep breath to ready himself for another fight, his face collides spectacularly with a fist. He swiftly catches the edge of the nearest standing ledge to prevent his body from falling on the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Pain and blood explodes internally and externally. His free hand goes automatically to his nose, smearing his fingers with the flowing blood. He has spots in his vision and a persisting headache impairs his logic and instincts from dodging the next punch.

Stomach. Another bout of pain. He doubles over, groaning loudly. Another punch. Side of face. He topples over the shelf he was using as a support, head hitting it. Pain implodes on either side of his head, ears screaming at him, as if between one punch and the inevitable collision they’ve grown a mouth and a pair of vocal chords.

Nasty. Awful. It fucking hurts and he can’t concentrate on anything other than _getupgetup, staying on the ground is not safe_. He tries. He really does, coercing his arms to sustain his body, but they give out when the smooth, hard point of a heavy boot disturbs once again his stomach. He’s pushed on his back, this time atop different products that were spilled on the floor.

 _God_ , the pain is making him see double. He turns on his side, coughing blood and resuming his futile attempts at getting on his feet. The guy is relentless. More kicks follow, striking his stomach, ribs and then his back. He blacks out for a few seconds, he thinks, when a particular well-placed boot collides with his livers.

Heavy thuds and a gust of air cools down the blood on his face, making it more evident that he’s a bloody mess. He can’t hear much of what happens behind him, the white noise in his ears muffling anything else like well-placed earbuds. A tiny part of him is grateful that no kick is coming his way. For now all he can concentrate on is breathing, which feels too much like wheezing, and a rapid summary of the damage.

His ribs are cracked or bruised at the very least; the same goes for his back. He’s pretty sure he’s covered in bruises and cuts and he might have a concussion. His right eye is shut tightly or maybe he’s injured it and lost his sight, he can’t be sure which.

Hands haul him up not long after, interrupting his list of injuries sustained, and he instinctively fights against it, at the same time trying to protect himself. But gentle and familiar hands touch his face and someone is calling him… ?

Opening his eyes (which means only the uninjured one) his vision is filled with the worried expression of his brother. And isn’t he a sight for sore eyes? His mouth is working and Sam knows, logically, that he’s saying or asking something, but the incessant buzzing in his ears wouldn’t let any sound pass through.

He shakes his head, although he doesn’t know what Dean asked. He’s counting on it being the usual ‘are you alright?’, because he’s so far from alright he wants to cry. Everything hurts like a bitch and he seriously doubts he’ll be able to walk out of the store on his own two feet.

“I don’t think I can walk,” he says or he thinks he does; probably what he managed to get out were unintelligible syllables, but he doesn’t care. He’s not okay.

Swiftly, the white noise evaporates into a cloud of much appreciated silence and his muddled brain becomes as clear and sharp as a shard of glass. He’s never experienced such clarity and focus, not even after a good night’s rest. He pinpoints every single injury on his body, which brings to his attention that he has a sprained ankle on top of everything else, without the added bonus of pain. It’s almost clinical, as if it’s another body he’s looking at.

Dean is still fussing over him in that not-fussing way of his, when he freezes mid-sentence, body going taut and attention averted towards their right. When Sam turns his head in the same direction, he finds himself going through the same reaction as his brother.

Several feet away from them, Lucifer’s staring straight at Sam, cold fury turning Sam into those ice statues he’s read about some time ago. But that degree of cold will never compare to Lucifer’s. Sam’s freezing from inside out, and he doesn’t even realize that he’s clenched his teeth to the point where it hurts. The rising tension doesn’t help his situation one bit.

“Stay away from my brother!” Dean snarls, because Lucifer is approaching them unhurriedly, but steadily. Nothing will deter him from his destination.

The determined set of his jaw and the unwavering gaze tells Sam as much.

Dean’s voice is drowned out when Lucifer touches Sam’s cheek, much like Dean did minutes ago. The only difference is that Dean’s had no effect on the roiling turmoil that’s been going on inside him.

“What did they do to you?” Lucifer whispers, the Arctic cold receding in favour of warm, calm pools. All of which is directed at the younger Winchester.

Sam is rendered speechless by what he’s hearing, seeing and feeling. It’s overwhelming. Just like the instant flood of warmth that invades him, melting the ice from within his soul.

“I’m sorry for letting this happen to you, Sam,” he says in the same subdued voice, as if he’s afraid that if he speaks normally Sam will shatter into a million pieces and disappear; his eyes are so intense, Sam is unable to glance away. Nothing hurts any more.

After that, everything melts together in a blur: Dean helping him stand, muttering under his breath; his feet working for a moment and failing Sam in the next; the sight of the Impala. And most of all, screams. So loud, so agonizing, so pitiful. The last sight he has of the store is of the big window painted crimson and a pair of glowing blue eyes staring at him between three lines of red, left behind by the drops of blood.

-ooo-

Castiel is the first to welcome them when they stumble through the front door. Dean quickly directs both of them towards the plush couch the color of cognac off to their left. Then he scuttles away in the direction of the kitchen, judging by the sounds of opening and closing cupboards.

Every time Sam tries to move even an inch, his body argues, pumping pain into his body-to-brain connection to make him stop. Castiel is right beside him, two fingers already on his forehead, expression dipped into concentration.

“I can’t heal you,” Cas declares, leaning back just as Dean is putting two glasses and a bottle of what seems like whisky on the coffee table in front of Sam.

“What do you mean you can’t heal him?” Dean’s the one to ask and Sam looks up at Castiel in confusion.

The angel frowns, studying Sam from head to toe. Just then, Gabriel appears two steps off to their left.

“You called, Cassey?” he asks all cheerful and twinkling eyes.

“I’m unable to heal Sam’s injuries,” Cas states.

“Whoa, Sasquatch.” He looks entirely too amused for his own good. “Who did you stomp on the foot to reduce you to this?” He gestures with his hand in a way that  encompasses all of Sam and the hunter treats him to one of his patented bitch face.

“Four sons of bitches attacked us at the store,” Dean mutters none too calmly. “Three of them thought to gank Sam.” A dark smirk worms its way on the hunter’s features for a second before his mouth turns down.

Gabriel looks back at Sam, but finds the more or less same kind of expression on the younger hunter’s face too.

“And there’s something you’re not telling,” Gabriel adds, eyes darting between the two brothers.

“Lucifer came just as two of them were going for a second round,” Dean mutters.

Cas meets Gabriel eyes, but none of them say anything in regard of their brother making a sudden appearance. Instead, Gabriel moves closer to Sam and touches one of his wrist, allowing his grace to flow inside the hunter.

“Damn,” he breathes out, eyes closing for a second, expression sour.

“What?” Sam makes to lean forward but winces two inches in and decides to stay put. “What is it?”

“I’d have hoped it wouldn’t be this drastic,” he mutters to himself, standing up, eyes still staring at Sam’s wrist.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean takes a step forward, hands balled into fists.

Gabriel sighs defeated. “Each soul is different. The four we created more so. Each responds to its archangel on distinct levels of intensity.” He looks each one straight in the eye, gauging the mood of the room; everyone seems to hang on Gabriel’s every word. “None of us poured too much of ourselves into their soul, knowing that they’ll descend to earth eventually.” A pause, stalling to find the right words to put the next piece of information into. “Lucifer seemed to be… awed by his own soul. So much that he poured every budding feeling that soul - Sam - triggered in him.”

He looks away, lost in his thoughts for a couple of seconds as the other occupants of the room process this new, startling piece of information about Lucifer.

“He ended up pouring more of himself than we were allowed.”

“And God?” Dean asks, voice oddly vulnerable. “Didn’t God do something about it?”

A wry smile graces Gabriel’s lips. “The only thing Dad could have done then was to completely destroy Sam’s soul. He doesn’t actively destroy what He creates, no matter what your religion books say. So He wasn’t going to do it. Especially not when Lucifer so gently and carefully completed the craft of his soul.”

“So what you’re trying to say is that Sam’s soul is flawed?” Dean goes on, anger flaring to life. “That’s why you can’t heal him?”

Gabriel catches the flash of hurt passing on Sam’s face. His mouth curves up into a small smirk. “Deano, who switched off the lights in your noggin’?” he asks, cocky expression in place. “No, Sam is far from being flawed. It’s the exact opposite: he’s perfect.” He looks down at the hunter in question, smirk melting into a fond smile.

He doesn’t add  _for Lucifer_. Not so much because it won’t be received well, but because he learnt that the Winchester brothers have a way of back-stabbing Fate spectacularly. Also, he’s sure Sam will probably be the only living creature in existence who will be able to get through to Lucifer.

“Then why can’t you two heal me?” Sam speaks up, feeling a bit queasy from all that he’s learned in the past ten minutes.

“Because the grace in you is stronger than before, what with Luci reopening the link between you two. Means that it won’t respond to any other but the original one.”

“What?” For the second time in the last two hours, Sam’s eyes widen impossibly.

“Yup,” Gabriel says with a satisfied smirk, even if it looks like a sadistic one to Sam. “Dear ol’ Luci is the only--” Gabriel stops mid sentence because Gabriel disappeared into thin air.

The remaining occupants of the room gawk at the place the archangel was mere moments ago. Sam rubs at his chest when the quivers become more persistent. He feels his presence before the other two see him. His head is already half turned towards the big window to his left, when Lucifer appears, startling Dean into a defensive position and Cas to jump up between him and Sam.

But the fallen archangel has eyes only for the younger hunter. His hand stops mid-rub, the uncomfortable vibrations ceasing.

“Hello, Sam,” he greets, mouth twitching into the barest smile.

Sam is too shocked to answer or to move. He just stares back at Lucifer, overwhelmed by how strongly he can feel his presence. It’s not the normal shift in the air that warns you of another body taking up space in the same room as you, but a more all encompassing kind of feeling. Like he’s enveloping Sam into a hug without actually doing it.

And the scariest thing about it is that Sam finds so much comfort in it he’s rendered frozen in place, soaking up as much of this sweet, familiar feeling as he can.

Dean and Cas won’t stay put, he belatedly realizes, as the two close in on Lucifer at the same time. He isn’t surprised when Lucifer wills them away, probably in the same place as he sent Gabriel (of course he knows who zapped Gabriel away); he expected it.

He snaps out of his thoughts when Lucifer’s hand on his knee sends pleasant tendrils along his limb, spreading throughout his body, knitting tore flesh and healing cracks and bruises. He looks down at the archangel, kneeling on one knee.

“Why are you here?” Sam whispers, still caught up in Lucifer’s clear blues.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asks, amusement coloring his words. Gently, he caresses Sam’s left cheek, slowly climbing up towards his temple.

The hunter blinks repeatedly when Lucifer’s cold fingertips slide closely to his left eye, realizing that his head feels light, there’s no pain anywhere on or in his body. His expression morphs from a wary expression to one of disbelief.

Soon, he can control his body as if he’s never been injured. He leans forward involuntarily, coming face to face with Lucifer, as if pulled by an invisible string.

A shaky sigh gushes out from between his parted lips. He’s swarmed by the conflicting feelings roiling inside him.

“Where did you send them?” Sam whispers, unable to take control over his own body and feelings. It’s so damn hard to put order to them _and_ will his limbs to listen to him at the same time. Damn it, he’s a mess.

Lucifer smiles. He lifts one hand and as he places it above the low table at his back, Sam’s knife he lost at the store appears on the clean surface of it.

“Gabriel’s stuck in one of his sweet memories with that pagan goddess he’s still trying to forget. As for your brother and his little angel, they’re in a diner somewhere in Manhattan.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” he whispers again, as he eyes the knife just a lunge away from him.

He realizes at about the same time that it’s Lucifer the one that’s keeping him so relaxed and malleable. He feels his anger coiling and uncoiling in his gut, ready to strike like a pissed off cobra, but he’s unable to reach it; to get a hold of it and let it overwhelm him.

Surprise and hurt flash and spread on Lucifer’s face at Sam’s question. But Sam refuses to let it get to him. He wets his lips, aware he’s half a palm away from the archangel’s face.

“Please let me go,” he whispers again. “Release my emotions.”

Sadness overflows the others on Lucifer’s face. “You’ll harm yourself if I do that.” He looks off to one side.

 _I doubt that_ , he doesn’t say. Instead, “That’s for me to decide,” he argues, although with his voice barely above a whisper and expression lax, he’s pretty sure he’s not convincing anybody. “They’re my feelings, and you have no right to keep them locked away from me.” Right about now a frown would have been deeply etched between his eyebrows, but as it is, his face looks carved into stone.

Only his hazel eyes keep changing nuances around the pupils.

Lucifer studies him for a while and Sam can’t gauge anything from his expression. The poker face is flawless.

“Okay.” The word barely ushers out of his mouth and Sam’s overwhelmed by the storm of feelings Lucifer’s been keeping at bay. Surprised breath is punched out of his lungs as the hunter leans forward.

Lucifer’s quick to support Sam’s body, but as soon as his rough palms make contact with his soul’s clothes, the hunter pushes himself into the archangel with all his body force. Lucifer falls backwards, sending the coffee table carrenning a few inches away from them, not before Sam’s quick reflexes have retrieve his knife.

Its sharp edge kisses Lucifer’s neck. He’s sprawled on the ground, Sam straddling him with a thunderous look on his face. The twitch in his jaw and the deadly grip his free hand has on his vessel’s light jacket, tells Lucifer his soul is pissed off.

“You have no right over me, grace or no grace,” Sam grits out, eyes dark with suppressed anger. “Understood? You can’t control me. You can’t just will away my brother and Cas. Gabriel too. You don’t get to take over my life. Do you understand?”

“What happens if I say no?” Lucifer asks, the personification of calmness. The pressure on the knife at his throat increases.

When Sam speaks again, the words come out like slots of ice; sharp edged and cold. “I’ll make sure you’ll never get out of that Cage.”

Lucifer’s face doesn’t reveal anything. They remain locked like that for some time, one breathing, the other staring, until a flutter of wings shatters the strange bubble they’ve plunged into and Sam falls a bit forward when the knife finds just air to cut into.

Lucifer left and Dean’s heavy steps approach him from his right.

“Sammy, you okay?” Dean’s worry seeps into Sam’s shoulder as the older hunter rests his hand there.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, knife clattering to the ground and hand pushing through his hair. “I’m okay.” But he’s shaking and the quiver in his chest doesn’t lessen up.

Gabriel is silent behind the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, this last scene surprised even me. Didn't plan on making Sam react like that, but as soon as the idea of Lucifer keeping at bay the storm of feelings within Sam sneaked in, I had to make Sam lash out. 
> 
> Next update: I still have to put the first word on the page...


	7. Chapter 7

The pulsing ache he constantly feels at Sam’s continued distance flares when Lucifer opens his eyes again. He blinked and two weeks flew just like that. No straying thought from him, no whisper, no calling from his dreams. Nothing. If he didn’t have the connection as proof he would think that Sam died.

The shudder at the unwanted thought manifests physically in the pupils of his vessel’s eyes as they dilate a fraction. Nothing the demon before him can catch on.

“My Lord,” his gritty voice disturbs the silence. “There are rumours of a rising new King. They’ve spread within your armies, my Lord, and many wonder if… when will we be able to fight.” Lucifer watches as the possessed vessel swallows with bored attention. “There are many awaiting your signal to march on earth. They’re growing… restless,” he finishes, head still bowed down, too afraid to look up and unwillingly cross a line. No demon was a fan of being snapped back to hell -- or out of existence.

Lucifer doesn’t speak just yet. His eyes are still trained on the twisted form of life at his feet. Even with this new King on the playground, he still has enough demon power to fight on two fronts. But things aren’t as certain as they were when Gabriel came to announce the Apocalypse so many human millennia ago, when he had been freshly thrown into the Cage.

There might be things at stake even his Father didn’t account for when he told his scribe what to write. Roles for each of his eldest sons. Truly a well crafted piece of play. Or is it?

From the few interactions he’s had with his soul, he has a feeling that free will will play an important role in all this.

The shift in air and the distant jingling of bells, once, warns him of an unexpected visit. Eyes refocus on the demon, whose impatience is hidden from a human’s dimed perception, but not from his.

“Remind them who’s responsible for their continued living and ask them if they wish to return to smoke. I’ll be happy to comply.” He wills the demon back in hell with a thought, just in time for the visitor’s presence to condense the air to a suffocating point, before releasing the tension.

The old, battered walls of the abandoned building creak softly, as if sighing in relief.

“I expected our next reunion to take hold on the battlefield at the clash of our swords.” He doesn’t turn from the window.

Michael doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even move. The silence grows weary on Lucifer, so with a minute sigh he turns around to look at his brother. He always liked to use his silence to make Lucifer comply. But when he takes in the sight of Michael he knows his brother was just contemplating Lucifer and nothing else.

Wings fill the space at his sides, looking comfortable in the cramped space they’re forced to bent in half to create a sort of protective semi circle around Michael’s vessel.

Their presence brings about a certain cautiousness to Lucifer. The wings, still white and glorious, but dimmed considerably in this plane’s physical form, are another proof that Michael wants nothing more than to talk with Lucifer. It’s almost amusing. They haven’t talked since before Adam and Eve. Are they going to do that now, with the approaching Apocalypse around the corner?

He tilts his head to one side, studying Michael studying him. His wings shift ever so slightly, as if breathing in and out, something not even Michael in his vessel does.

Lucifer doesn’t release his battered wings, remaining three steps away from the window, with his thumbs tucked into Nick’s pocket jeans.

“If you have something to say, do it, before the dust settles heavily on our vessels, and both demons and angels come searching for our whereabouts,” Lucifer says, ignoring the concomitant twitch of their mouths on opposite sides. He takes into consideration only the fact that his snark is still effective on his brother.

“I wished to speak with you, brother,” he says at long last, voice smooth and yet distorted to Lucifer’s ears. Only a glimpse of Michael’s familiar true voice reaches him and the knowledge brings discomfort in distant parts of his memory. He did look up to his big brother for a long time.

“And here you are,” Lucifer retorts, but this time no mouth twitches. “If it’s about Father - again -, I think you can expand your patience a fraction more until the set date. I’ll be sure to bring extended arguments as to why I disagree with Him.” A small smirk graces Lucifer’s lips.

Michael’s expression remains unchanged, but his wings tremble slightly, as if taking delight in Lucifer’s sharp tongue. Or does it signify suppressed anger?

Curious. This is definitely not how he expected his brother to react to him bringing about their Father. He thought there would have been more -- how do humans put it? oh, right -- _bitching_. Having that expectation flunked, he has to rethink his every move and word now.

“I came here to speak about your soul.”

_Ah._

An easy smile spreads on his lips. Michael’s wings vibrate for a second or two, before settling down. He either wanted to say something else or was caught off-guard by Lucifer’s smile.

“What about him?”

“How are things between you two?” Michael asks, a bit off handedly. Well, his brother hasn’t had lots of practice dealing with feelings. Lucifer suspects that even coming this far as to ask his own brother, the one he himself put into a Cage in the depths of hell, how he was doing needed a lot of hard work and nerve.

From how he remembers him, Michael is better compared to inanimate objects than to breathing, living creatures. But that’s just because he shoulders his responsibilities far too well.

Indeed, Father’s soldier. Heaven’s protector. A lot of responsibility there. And still, he tries to appear more human than he is. Something tells him, he stole some of it from watching over his soul, Adam. Strong, healthy tendrils of pearly white dance around Michael’s grace, extending to his wings, through feathers like soft, playful chains.

Lucifer’s smile turns sharp, retreating from his eyes. A hardened mask to hide how close to home that question hit.

“What’s the purpose of this visit, hmm?” Lucifer counters with a question of his own. “Millennia of hatred between us, and the first time you come to me of your own volition is to ask about me and my soul? What are you aiming at?”

Michael’s stoic face cracks around the edges as tendrils of emotion seep into his nicely crafted features. Being the most beautiful angel of Heaven does not mean Lucifer can’t appreciate beauty when he sees it. John Winchester was one fine piece of work, he gives his Father that. It brings to mind Sam.

The white wings grow in height, crowding against the ceiling and bringing about the soft cry of floorboards covered in peeling paint as they’re forced to accommodate the supernaturally silky extensions. It’s not an intimidating trick, even if it looks like one for all intents and purposes.

No. This is Michael’s way of mimicking the deep intake of a breath he certainly has no need of. Curious how he chose to manifest a part of his grace, thus making him vulnerable in front of Lucifer in a non physical way. He still can’t figure out if it’s a trick to convince Lucifer to let his guard down or if it’s Michael’s odd way to extend… what? Trust? Really?

Besides, Lucifer might resolve the disagreement between him and their Father before Michael even starts to _think_ about making use of tricks to get what he wants. That’s more Gabriel’s expertise.

“I take it you wasted precious time from ruling Heaven to stalk Adam, just to learn how to talk with your brother without bringing up our Father or the inevitable fight. Only there’s not much to talk about, is there?”

A muscle twitches on Michael’s face and Lucifer realizes that Michael actually resorted to lock away his righteous anger before coming here to speak with him. The gleeful smile takes over Lucifer’s face unimpeded. _Oh_ , how much fun he’ll have prodding and poking at his brother’s restraint.

 _Oh, how_ \-- he won’t do it. The building giddiness flares out without a fuss as an odd thought occurs to him.

Michael could have so easily stayed put and waited for the fatidic day to come, without moving a muscle in his direction. Instead he went to great pains to reign his anger and pride in, just to try and have a normal (as normal as the current situation permits) conversation with his little brother.

That’s so unexpected and uncharacteristic, Lucifer stills in and out. Not even the lazy fluctuation of his grace can be seen. He simply turns to stone in a millisecond and the other archangel’s wings reach out to him in an unconscious movement, before stopping and retreating a few inches. Lucifer sees it, but does not respond in any way.

Michael still cares about him, despite everything and he did _not_ need that revelation just now. The real question here is: is _he_ willing to meet his brother halfway?

He pushes Michael’s grace away when it tries to coax life back into his. The push borders on anger, but not quite.

“It is my duty to make sure that Samuel Winchester does not become a Nephilim,” Michael says by way of answer, voice flat.

“He’s far from becoming a Nephilim, I assure you,” Lucifer tells him, looking beyond Michael’s vessel at the cumulus of conscious energy that is him. “I secured the link between us.” He lets the shadow of his wings reflect on the walls behind him, aided by the light from Michael’s wings.

His eyes dart up to look at Lucifer’s shadows, making out the slim filaments twisted around and through the wings. They were still too thin to be considered proper linking material, but they were growing. Slowly, but steadily.

“What about our brother, Gabriel?” Michael finds himself asking, and surprise becomes visible on Lucifer’s face.

Now _this_ is what he calls interesting, bordering on odd.

“What about him?” he can’t help but ask back, far too curious about what Michael wants to find out.

“How is he?” The feathers on his wings tremble almost imperceptibly, as if the movement is restrained from making itself visible. If Lucifer didn’t know his brother this well, he might have mistaken it for apprehension. “I refuse to believe that he turned his back on heaven.”

 _Oh_. It might be apprehension after all. Lucifer narrows his eyes a fraction.

“He was doing fine, last we met,” he tells his brother, each word pronounced carefully. “Still unhappy about our fight, but unfortunately we can’t do anything about what Father planned for us.” Lucifer lifts his shoulder in a fluid movement, as if he had a lifetime worth of practicing shrugging.

“There’s a lesson in all Father says and does,” Michael can’t help but point out. He knows that tight restraint on his righteous anger is slipping. Lucifer smirks.

What kind of little brother would he be if he didn’t _at least_ prod a little more?

“Is there?” he asks challenging.

Michael’s wings bristle, grace burning in his eyes, but it is immediately tampered down. He recomposes himself in the blink of an eye. Not that Lucifer actually blinked. Otherwise two more weeks would have gone by and he wouldn’t have heard his brother’s answer.

“I care for all my brothers,” Michael says, avoiding Lucifer’s bait narrowly.

“Even for the cast out one?” It’s sarcasm he sends Michael’s way, but it’s really only a thin mask to hide how much he wants to hear the answer to this question.

Michael falls silent for an entire minute, bright blue eyes scrutinizing Lucifer’s devil-may-care posture.

“Even for you, Lucifer, yes,” the archangel answers honestly.

Lucifer grows still once again, but this time his grace fluctuates chaotically, in confusion. He studies his brother for a long time, conflicting feelings warring inside him just like when he was cast out of heaven -- by the hand of his own brother. How is it possible for the same brother to bring about the _same_ kind of conflict but in reverse? By now, he thought he had full control over his emotions.

Just as Michael opens his mouth to say something else, Lucifer widens his eyes, shock marring his features unconsciously. The tendrils are pulled taut against his wings and grace, as if someone is pulling the other end of the thread further than Lucifer allowed it.

He takes off without another word to Michael.

Sam is in danger.

 

-ooo-

 

"How dare you lay a hand on my soul, brother!" Lucifer’s freshly materialised blade clashes with the other’s as he uses the extra weight from his flight to push his brother in the opposite wall of the fabricated space.

"That soul is filthy. It has no reason to exist," Raphael spits out, wings fluttering to life in an aggressive arch. "And you're no brother of mine!"

Sam is sprawled face down besides the bed, wheezing out wetly. Lucifer spares a second to touch the grace within his soul and try to sooth the pain, but the wails are bloodcurdling and he can’t concentrate on Sam alone just yet.

"Raphael!" Michael says, entering through the rupture in space Lucifer left behind. "Your mission was to make sure his soul was answering our brother's call accordingly."

"He attacked first, Michael," Raphael bites out in anger. Lucifer puts more pressure on his blade, even as Raphael does all he can to keep them from reaching his throat.

Lucifer has always been feared in a battle. He was the only one who could rival Michael, everybody knew it.

"That's because my grace is programmed to protect my soul from anyone whose intention is to harm him, _before_ they actually do it." Sam’s coughing blood on the floor and Lucifer hears loud and clear how Sam's soul and the grace within cry out in pain and distress. Raphael didn't just harm him physically.

Grace burns wildly in Lucifer's eyes as he realizes what his brother tried to do. "Raphael," he growls, each syllable stressed dangerously; their swords advance towards Raphael’s throat a few more inches, sparks igniting to life as the pressure creates friction. "You dared try to separate my grace from his soul. He would've died, you fool!"

Raphael sneers. "Better to purge the earth of one of the two abominations while we still have time."

Michael crouches beside Sam. Lucifer's grace thrashes wildly towards his brother, desperate to protect Sam, but Michael pushes back gently.

"That's not for you to decide, brother," he tells Raphael as he touches Sam's forehead and heals any physical injuries sustained.

He can do nothing for the agony of his soul. That’s a task only Lucifer’s able to accomplish, seeing as the grace doesn't accept any other but the owner of it. He can hear in the crying notes of suffering a certain harmony, closer to the one Michael remembers as belonging to Lucifer. But it is also vicious, like a wounded animal, biting whoever tries to get near it and the soul it's connected to.

He doesn't know if he should be impressed or angry with his brother for going overboard with his first and last soul he crafted.

Michael stands up and looks at Raphael. The seriousness of his expression isn't lost upon Lucifer who is able to feel his grace, even if it’s been a long time since he’s last been attuned to it. He knows what awaits Raphael. In the next second the sound of two sets of wings warns Lucifer of their departure.

He wastes no time and turns to Sam, sheathing his sword. The hunter is standing whole and a little dazed.

"Are you alright, Sam?"

Sam looks up at him with a frown. “How was he able to heal me, when Gabriel said that only you could?”

Lucifer’s concern dissipates a bit. “Because this is a replica of your reality,” he points out the tear in space he made near the foot of Sam’s bed. “It helped that I was in your vicinity, which pushed down some of your barriers and allowed Michael to heal you physically.”

“Physically?” Sam asks, befuddled.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

Lucifer purses his lips, as if displeased with what he is about to say. “Raphael tried to pry my grace away from your soul. You don’t feel it now, but there are tears on your soul who need to be healed,” he trails off, taking a step towards Sam.

“No.” Sam refuses, taking a step back from Lucifer's outstretched hand. “Thank you, but I don’t need your help. I feel perfectly fine.”

“Are you sure?” Lucifer is doubtful, the pain in the notes didn’t diminish once.

"Yes," Sam replies quickly, turning halfway from Lucifer.

"I wish you would trust me, Sam." The hurt in Lucifer’s voice isn’t lost upon Sam, but he pointedly refuses to look at the archangel in question. He doesn’t need his empathy to fall on the wrong person.

"You didn't quite earn that right," Sam grits out, voice hard and rough; he isn’t sure who’s trying to convince more. Lucifer stares at him for what feels like hours.

"If you ever need me, you only have to think about me and I'll come." Sam doesn't make eye contact with him, but he does nod in acknowledgement.

Lucifer leaves after another minute or so of tensed silence. Looking around, Sam realizes that there are no proofs of a fight visible anywhere. The rupture in space is gone, too. Or at least that’s what his eyes tell him.

He collapses on top of his disturbed sheets, uncaring if it’s his real bed or not, and plunges into a dreamless sleep. It took everything he had to stand up to an archangel, even with the aid of the grace inside him.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small chapter to end the previous one.   
> Hopefully I'll have the next one up shortly :)

He doesn’t come to himself of his own volition. He would have continued to float around without a destination, but the obnoxious poundings snatch him away from the peaceful place he entered.

He realizes they’re knocks. On his door. With bleary eyes he pushes himself off the bed and makes the trek on wobbly, still uncoordinated legs towards the source of the noise. He’s still so damn tired and he feels weak all over, as if he’s running low on energy. It’s not even that still-trying-to-start-the-engines all go through in the morning. It’s deeper.

Sleep-warm fingers rub persistently at his chest as he finally opens the door.

“Whoa, what’s with the zombie look on you?” Dean asks as he steps inside; Sam follows the easy way his brother carries himself from half closed eyelids. A lazy jealousy flares in him as he leans heavily against the door. “Didn’t you went to bed early last night?”

“Yeah, I did,” Sam murmurs, forcing himself to stand on his two feet. His brain isn’t able to process more than the bed he’s currently moving towards and what he remembers of what happened last night. “I had this weird dream,” he recounts as he bends down on the soft, soft mattress on both hands and one knee. “But it was so damn real.”

Dean studies his brother closely, suspicious of the unusual tiredness that clings to him. Yesterday he was perfectly fine. Or as fine as he’s seen Sam in a while. No more tired than usual. But what he sees now is damn straight exhausted, as if he hasn’t slept in over a week.

Dean frowns. “What was the dream about?”

Face half sunken into the pillow and eyes closed, Sam says, “dick angels.”

That sends off alarms in Dean’s head and he calls Cas with a thought.

“Yes, Dean,” the angel says, looking at the older hunter, “is there a problem?”

Dean just points towards his apparently sleeping brother. Castiel frowns as he looks over him, but then his eyes travel up on the wall and around the room as if he’s seeing something Dean isn’t able to see.

“This room doesn’t feel right,” he announces after a minute or so of silence. “Someone has disturbed the space-time continuum.”

“What?” Dean frowns. “What do you mean? Aren’t we warded against all mighty things out there?” Which in translation he really means angels and demons. They’ve wormed their way to the top of supernatural beings that have the power to fuck up with the world at large so badly he wouldn’t even know where to begin to right it.

“We are,” Cas replies, perusing the room once more, before settling his attention on Dean.

It doesn’t reassure the hunter one bit. With Sam in a suspicious state and the discovery that someone might or might not have been in his little brother’s room, the worry antes up to eleven. He’s already jittery by the time Gabriel pops in. He’s not eating anything this time, hands into his jeans pockets, thumbs out and a smirk plastered on his face as if it’s the cherry on top of the cake.

He looks like he’s about to say something snarky as per usual, when his attention is pulled away from Dean and Cas. He whistles as he looks around.

“Who’s been messin’ with the reality here?” he asks, tone too light for the situation at hand, but then all his playfulness bleeds out of him as he takes in Sam’s splayed body. The frown doesn’t bode well. “And who’s been messin' with Sasquatch here?”

“What? Messing?” Dean takes a step towards Gabriel, as if it would be enough to urge the answer to his questions faster.

“He’s in pain,” Gabriel says, not looking away from Sam, as he approaches the foot of the bed. “His soul’s in pain.” Eyes narrow down on him. “How could I not notice before?” He turns to look at Cas. “Can you hear it?”

Cas’ brow dips in concentration or maybe confusion, Dean can’t tell, but stays put and waits for him to say something. He hates it when the angels talk English but they seem to be on a totally different language frequency than the rest of the world, which in most of the cases amounts to just Dean (and occasionally Sam, when he’s not snoring into his pillow, that is).

“Yes, but faintly,” Cas answers after a couple of seconds and looks up at Gabriel.

The archangel nods once, features all serious and tense. “It’s like the song of a dying star.”

“But he’s not dying,” Cas intervenes.

“Whoa, hold on!” Dean steps between the two, forcing their attention towards the hunter. “Who’s dying? Can somebody explain what’s going on with Sam… again?”

Gabriel looks back at the hunter in question. “Someone’s hurt your brother’s soul. There are… gashes all over it and it’s crying in pain. I believe it’s been more intense, because now I can barely pick it up.”

“What happened here, Gabriel?” Castiel asks in that gravelly voice of his that brook no arguments. “Why is Sam in this condition when yesterday he seemed perfectly fine? And why are there traces of tears into the space?”

Gabriel just turns his attention towards Dean.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean says, putting his hands up. “I know less than you. He only said that he’s had a weird dream and when I asked him what it was about he only said ‘dick angels’ and then passed out.”

“So it hasn’t been only Lucifer,” Gabriel concludes.

“You already suspected him?” Dean asks, just to make some things clear for himself.

Gabriel doesn’t look at him. “He is and he’ll always be the prime suspect in anything odd that happens to Sam. This time more so, because he’s the only one who can find his soul even under a mountain of wards.” Dean swallows noisily as he glances at his brother.

“But Sam used plurals, which belies more than one.” He walks over to Sam’s side and touches his shoulder before Dean can protest.

The touch seems electrified, because Sam jolts awake with a start, rolling to the other side of the bed instinctively, a confused and scared look on his face. As he recognizes the familiar faces gathered around his bed, he relaxes somewhat.

“What are you doing in my room again?” He rubs at his eyes, trying to will away the sleep that won’t fuck off.

“Pyjama party, Sasquatch,” comes Gabriel’s lilting voice as he smirks. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”

Sam’s about to answer seriously, when he sees the smirk on Gabriel’s face and it clicks in that he’s only jocking. He shakes his head.

“Too early to put up with you,” he mutters as he rubs some more at his eyes.

“It’s almost noon, Sam,” Dean says, coming to his side. Brotherly support will never be enough when it’s about them.

“Pleasantries aside,” Gabriel interrupts, smirk sliding off his face. “What happened to you last night?”

Sam drags his eyes towards Gabriel once again, mind working slowly to process the question and recall on top of that.

“Your dick older brothers paid me a visit.” Is the first thing that comes out of his mouth. “All three of them. One beat me to a pulp. One healed me,” he says begrudgingly.

Gabriel lifts an eyebrow. “And the other?” Sam doesn’t answer.

He looks down at an invisible point on the covers between his bent legs, searching the words to express how damn odd last night has been for him.

“Been dreaming,” he starts, but then grimaces as he remembers, ”I guess it’s not a dream if it’s about Raphael, of all people... angels.” He shakes his head in dismissal. “He came in and… actually, it was the sound of shards shattering that woke me up. I found him creepily watching me right there where Cas is now.” He points with his head towards the angel.

He sighs. “Things just kept exploding around. More so when I caught sight of his angel blade. There was this resolute look on his face. Like... like a soldier with a precise mission in his mind, you know?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Then the walls started peeling away and flying over towards him. Every inanimate thing in this room attacked him at one point or another. I was out of the bed at lightning speed and was heading towards the door when he threw me into the wall.”

He takes a deep breath before continuing. “We fought. I don’t know how I managed to keep him at bay. I was hurting all over, but I was still standing. And then… then I suddenly felt… it felt like someone was trying to tear me apart from the inside. The pain was excrutiating. Didn’t you guys hear me screaming?” He looks questioningly at each of them as his fingers start rubbing at that place in the center of his chest once again.

Gabriel’s expression is frozen onto his face and Cas looks confused, but wary. Dean is the only one shakes his head no.

“I think my throat started bleeding from how much I screamed. It seemed to go on forever and then… I think I blacked out. The next thing I hear is the clash of something metallic and when I open my eyes, Lucifer’s there fighting Raphael.”

He gives the room a cursory glance. “Michael came in shortly after and healed my wounds.”

“How?” Castiel asks. “We weren’t able…”

“Lucifer said that it was because of the dimension we were in and the fact that he was close by. He couldn’t…” he trails off as he becomes aware of what his fingers have been doing for the past couple of minutes and forces his hand down on his thigh.

It aches. Deep within his chest there’s a hollow he can’t fill in no matter how hard he tries. The room lapses into a tense silence, unspoken words floating around opressingly. Sam can feel them. Most of them come from Dean. He’s a tense wall of support at his side. He could do without it, really.

His eyes drop once again. The exhaustion is bone deep and he’s pulled down by gravity or his own bed, he’s not sure which, but he doesn’t care either. As long as there’s a mattress under his body and an invitingly soft pillow supporting his head, he’s in Dreamland in no time.

Dean looks at each angel in the room questioningly.

“Fabricated space,” Gabriel answers, popping up a lollipop in his mouth.

“But how?” Dean asks, frustrated. He thought they were safe, but with this new situation he’s itching to just move both him and his brother away from there and keep going.

“Technically, he would have to have seen this room at least once to create a replica of it,” Cas explains. “But he’s never been here.”

“And Lucifer wouldn’t reveal his soul’s whereabouts to anyone.” Dean looks at the determination on Gabriel’s face as he says those words, jaw set and eyes alive, and finds himself believing the Trickster, however crazy that might sound.

But the question remains unanswered.

_How?_

 


	9. Chapter 9

Lucifer didn’t show up once since that night and Sam wasn’t getting any better. He slept most of the time, and barely had the necessary energy to sit up and eat. Somehow Gabriel was appointed as Sam’s babysitter, but neither Cas nor Dean brought it up. Better to keep up the pretenses that the archangel wasn’t fussing over the younger hunter like a mother hen.

It would surely make him stop, and Dean needed all the time he could get to search for a safer place. Castiel helped him with the material, popping in every few hours with books on myths and legendary places they could use as a hideout -- to Dean’s dismay.

That was a task that has always belonged to Sam: research. He was the better out of the two at it. And the piles of old, sometimes dusty books, never seemed to decrease, no matter how many all-nighters Dean pulled. But he was stubborn and relentless when he had a goal in mind, so he kept reading until the words blurred together and his eyes fell shut on their own accord.

Castiel lost count on how many times he popped in that week and Dean was sprawled uncomfortably on the couch swarmed by books and snoring softly.

Dean would always wake up to a blanket covering him up.

“Hey… Cas,” Dean greets from the kitchen, voice swiftly losing its happy tone when the angel places two huge tomes on top of the pile on the coffee table. “Tell me those are the last ones you’ve found.”

Cas looks up at him with a frown. “Yes, they are,” he says and Dean’s mood improves as he lifts the mug of coffee to his lips. “From the United States, France and Nordic European countries. I still have to search Italy, India, all of Asia and--”

Dean groans. “Please don’t.” He looks crestfallen and grumpy, if Cas reads him well. The shadows under his eyes don’t add points to his healthy side and the angel starts to worry.

“Okay.” Cas complies. “I’ll stay here and help you with the research.” It’s curious how the hunter’s mood improves so much in such a short span of time.

“Really?” The smile he sends Cas could be easily compared to the sun. “Then you can take everything that’s not on the low table, couch of armrests.” He quickly divides the mountains.

Cas looks around at the amount of piles. They topped Dean’s share three times over.

“Taking advantage of my baby bro’s kindness already, Deano?” Gabriel pops in, a half-eaten Mars bar in one hand.

The hunter doesn’t even turn around to look at the archangel. He plops in the middle of the couch, two books opened on the coffee table.

“How’s Sam?” he asks instead.

Gabriel sighs and comes into the room. Castiel is already deep into one of the heaviest books on myths and legends he brought.

“Sleeping,” he says, stopping just behind the couch. “I’ve been trying for the past week to wheedle my way in and heal Sasquatch’s soul, but Lucifer’s grace wouldn’t let me.”

Dean ignores the irking feeling at someone meddling with his brother so deeply. It’s necessary. He knows. Still.

“If only he’d call for him,” Gabriel mutters as he munches on the bar.

It’s then that Dean slams the book he was keeping in his hands on top of the others and a couple fall off the table. Cas looks up at them, a bit startled by the sudden noise.

“I’m fed up with all this fucking angelic interference!” Dean snaps.

“Oh, really?” Gabriel says snidely and a snap of fingers empties the room of all the books.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” He jumps up off the couch to stare angrily at the archangel.

“You said you were fed up with angelic interference.” Gabriel shrugs, the personification of nonchalance, although somehow Dean knows it’s just a mask for his anger. Another snap of fingers and Cas disappears.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean growls. “Bring him back! Now!”

“Oh, yeah?” He crosses his arms, staring challengingly down at Dean. “And why would I do that? After all it’s not like you need him. You can do everything on your own, right?” He smiles cruelly.

Dean looks stricken, as if someone slapped him hard in the face. A light flush is working its way on his cheeks. He’s trying hard to keep his anger at bay and not make things worse. Looking at the spot Cas was standing a couple of minutes ago, he sighs.

“I’m sick of your douche brothers,” Dean confesses, all the anger gone from his voice. “They all want something with Sam.”

“Aww, our little Deano wants more attention,” Gabriel coos sarcastically. “I could drop a line to Michael and tell him to pay you a visit. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of things in common. You know, being the big brothers to unruly little ones… I can foresee the greatest bonding time to have ever bonded since the day of Creation.”

“Shut up!” Dean snaps. “You know that’s not what I meant.” He glares at Gabriel, who only holds up his hands in a mock surrender. He wouldn’t get rid of that patronizing grin soon. “One of your di…” Gabriel narrows his eyes in warning, “ _brothers_ tried to maim him and the other still isn’t sure if he should let Sam live or kill him on the spot. And all of this happened because of friggin’ _Satan_ and the grace he put into Sam’s soul! What the hell thought God when he let him play around with a soul?!”

Gabriel was uncharacteristically calm during Dean’s accusations. The same calmness pervaded his words as he thought it best to offer the hunter an explanation.

“What _God_ probably thought was that this would prove to be a good lesson to Lucifer. He showed signs of disagreement when He started creating souls, energy condensed in the form of a ball, different than that of an angel which could expand at will. Lucifer saw these souls as tiny and imperfect. Being used to infinity and then having something so limited… he couldn’t understand why our Father deemed it fit to create them.

Dad saw the skepticism in him, which is why He allowed us to help Him then. It was a sort of warm up for what He planned next: you, made of earth and pure energy. You already know that his anger bested him when Dad asked us to bow to you, which brings us to Michael throwing him in the Cage. But…” he trails off, looking out of the window.

It’s surprising that Dean remained silent during Gabriel’s explanation. It’s not like that’s something he could have learned during Sunday school. Not that he ever went to it. Teenager Dean thought it to be a waste of time, on top of not quite believing in the existence of angels and demons.

Dean arches an eyebrow. “But?”

Gabriel glances back at him. “Before Lucifer fell… he made me vow that I would take care and protect Sam’s soul until the day he’ll be allowed out of the Cage.”

The hunter’s eyes widen in surprise. Gabriel wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“So… you were like his guardian angel?” Dean asks feebly.

Gabriel chuckles weakly. “More like his guardian _arch_ angel. But yeah, something like that.”

Dean starts fidgeting where he stands, so much unlike the hunter that Gabriel peers curiously at him.

“Um… thank… you… ?” He didn’t sound in the slightest sure about what came out of his mouth. Gabriel lets out a hearty laugh.

“Oh boy, I haven’t laughed so hard since Switzerland accidentally invaded Liechtenstein!” Gabriel comments, drying the tears from the corners of his eyes. Dean is dumbfound and a bit embarrassed. “Don’t thank me,” Gabriel says more softly now. “Sam’s soul was and still is a thing of beauty. It almost rivaled Lucifer… before he fell.” He looks down, saddened by the memory.

“Anyway.” He cheers himself up and snaps his fingers: Cas and a ton of books reappear in the same spot they were minutes ago.

“Dean, are you alright?” Cas was already at his side, a protective hand on his shoulder, narrowed eyes pointed towards his brother.

“Yeah, Cas, I’m fine,” Dean responds meekly.

Gabriel smirks. “Next time you think you don’t need angelic assistance, think again.”

“Smartass.” Dean can’t help the jibe.

The smirk grows into something dangerous on Gabriel’s face and Dean knows instinctively that it doesn’t bode well. True on his instincts as soon as Gabriel snaps himself out of the room, a heavy tome falls on the hunter’s foot with a dull thump.

“ _Son of a bitch_!” he bellows.

Gabriel can hear Dean’s curse from Sam’s room, but the cackle he releases doesn’t stir the younger Winchester once. He sighs and puts his fingers on Sam’s forehead once again.

-ooo-

Tendrils of grace reach Sam’s soul. Music overflows the microcosmic space, distorted and still tone-deaf. Lucifer’s grace is enveloped protectively around Sam. Between the fluctuating filaments, Gabriel can make out deep gashes within the energy. They aren’t bleeding, because normally energy would just stitch itself up. Sam’s soul is unable to do it itself.

The wounds are dry, like craters, a constant source of pain. Every time it wailed, Lucifer’s grace would just insinuate itself into the tears, trying to sooth the soul. But it only alleviated the pain temporary. The grace didn’t have enough power to heal the wounds. Instead it acted as a painkiller. Though for how much longer, Gabriel wasn’t sure.

What he knew was that it drained Sam of energies and it couldn’t go on anymore.

Blinking, his manifestation wavers slightly where it hovers close by. It’s the image of Lucifer cradling Sam’s soul with love and care that Gabriel can’t clear away. The memories are hard to keep at bay when even through the tone deaf melody he can hear loud and clear how much love there still is within the grace for this soul. It brings so much sorrow within the archangel that it attracts the grace’s attention.

 _Stay away from my soul!_ It warns in not-quite melodic notes.

Gabriel twists the song he quieted down to a low thrum into something that could connect with the grace, but it only made it bristle and inflate around Sam as if to better shield him from Gabriel. Using his own songs isn’t helping at all. If he thinks about it, it didn’t work the last couple of times he tried to contact the grace instead of trying to get behind the barrier and heal Sam himself.

He falls silent for a millisecond or more. Time doesn’t exist in this microcosmos; it’s irrelevant. Then, Gabriel begins singing notes that brings about so much sorrow and longing in him. He knows he can never compare himself with how Lucifer sang it, but it’s enough to make the grace still.

It recognizes the song.

“You have to let me heal your soul,” he plows in as soon as he makes sure that he has the grace’s full attention. “Right now you’re only hurting him!”

_NO!_

The force behind that word expels Gabriel back into his vessel. When he opens his eyes, Sam is already awake, looking curiously up at him.

“You need to call him,” Gabriel tells him without missing a beat.

Sam regards him for a couple of seconds, before he sighs and pushes himself to sit up. He’s thinner than two weeks ago, his skin taking on a more alabaster note. It’s not a sight to behold.

“I don’t want to,” Sam confesses.

“Why?” Gabriel asks, confused. “He only wants to protect you. Didn’t he prove it that night?”

“He manipulates me,” Sam grits out, fists clenching the covers. “Did you know that he can make me feel whatever he wants?” He looks up at Gabriel in a more tamed anger than usual. Not much energy to summon up the fire that fuels it.

“I don’t think that was his intention, Sam.” Gabriel tries to placate the hunter, because that’s not how his brother would do things around his soul. He’s always been upfront with what he thinks or wants. “He may be able to manipulate your emotions, but did he force you to do something you didn’t want?”

Sam swallows and turns his head in the opposite direction. “He didn’t,” he says through clenched teeth. “But keeping at bay my emotions demonstrated that he can control me. He may not do it right now, but how can I be sure that he won’t try in the future? When I’ll inevitably disagree with him?” Sam looks back at Gabriel.

“He cares too much about you to resort to that kind of thing.”

“That’s neither here nor there. It’s like finding a wounded bird, taking it home and medicating it back to health, but then you find you’re too selfish to let it go back in the wild so you put it into a cage. That’s not how I want to end up.”

Gabriel purses his lips. “Why don’t you give him a chance? You can’t start to know him, if you keep him locked out. Isn’t that how things work with you humans when you want a relationship?”

Sam stares at the archangel. “I feel nothing for him, Gabriel,” he states, and Gabriel feels something breaking inside him.

Still, he can’t let it end there so easily.

“You say that now, because all you know about him is what your kin thinks he is.”

“And you say they’re wrong.”

“What I’m saying is that you should judge for yourself if Lucifer is really what you grew up to think he is,” Gabriel says. “Besides, weren’t you the one who gave others a chance to explain themselves? Or was that Dean, and you’re actually the one who shoots first and asks questions later?” He crosses his arms.

Sam purses his lips in thought, stubbornly not meeting Gabriel’s stare.

“I need some time to think about it,” he says, “could you--”

But Gabriel is already gone so Sam sighs and lies down on the pillow, closing his eyes. Thinking and talking for so long brought about such a bone deep exhaustion, he’s asleep in under a minute.

 

-ooo-

 

Sam’s standing in front of a door. It’s dark outside and he’s shaking from head to toe. It takes him a second to realize that he’s not cold; the tremors in his joints have no reason to be. And yet they are.

It’s horror he’s shaking from and he’s soaked wet in his own perspiration. The door is hot in front of him; it radiates so much heat.

He knows that he knows where he is and what’s behind that door, but it’s hard to think clearly when he feels like he’s melting. Instincts push his hand forward and the knob is too hot for it, but it also feels cool against his palm. The duality of it passes unchecked through his mind. It’s what there’s behind this door that he wants to find out.

The knob sears into his palm, maybe it even sizzles, but no acrid smell of burnt flesh reaches his nostrils. He pushes the door open and a scream forces him into motion, stumbling forward as the fire licks at his face without touching him.

“Jess. _Jess, Jess. NO!_ ” he shouts actually approaching his girlfriend even if she’s glued to the ceiling and engulfed by the starving tongues of fire.

The feelings, the memories of his dead girlfriend force him down on the dark moquet, curling in on himself, and he screams his agony and sorrow and pain, because she didn’t deserve it, she didn’t deserve any of it, and if he hadn’t been so damn naive as to think that he could have a normal life, away from all the shit that’s been happening out there, she could still have been alive and maybe married, maybe with kids, but no, no, he had to… he had to…

“Sam.”

He’s crying. The light grey, pajama shirt’s sleeve is soaked in his tears and snot and it might be gross on a sunny day, but now it’s nighttime outside and he’s just relived the death of his girlfriend so a dirty sleeve is the least of all his problems.

“Sam.” It’s closer now. The voice feels right besides him, crouched on the floor. It’s cool, he knows it is even if it doesn’t touch him.

He also knows who the voice belongs to, and he doesn’t care. He simply has no more fight in him. This is it. This is the last drop. He’s giving up. Everything. He can’t go on like this anymore.

“No, Sam, you won’t give,” Lucifer tells him. The hand on his back runs in small circles and he shouldn't be so relaxed in the presence of the Devil, but he is -- he is.

Sam snorts in a derisive way, but doesn’t lift his head from the protective embrace of his arms. “What makes you think that I won’t?” he asks in the most sarcastic tone he can muster right now, although it’s watered down by the tears that are still running. “I’ve reached the bottom right now and I can’t… I don’t… I give up figh--”

“Because you’re a survivor,” Lucifer interrupts him. “You will keep fighting against every odd, because that’s what you do best, that’s what you know. I know you will, Sam. I know, even if you feel like giving up now, tomorrow you’ll find another reason to keep going.”

Sam peers up at Lucifer, clearly surprised by the fact that the Devil just offered him comfort and words of encouragement. When he leans up, his eyes aren’t puffy and teary as he expected. There’s not even snot. No trace that he’s been crying just now. And his head feels clearer now. Much more clearer than a minute ago.

“What did you do to me and why are you here?” Sam asks, suspicion creeping on his features. “Didn’t I say to stay away from me?”

Lucifer shakes his head. “No, you didn’t explicitly say that.”

Sam narrows his eyes at him. “Why are you here? I didn’t call you.”

“True,” he says and looks around Sam’s room and then up at the ceiling. “Your soul called me.”

Surprise flashes on the hunter’s face. “H-how?” he manages to ask. It’s hard to speak around the lump in his throat.

“You were in great distress, which brought about much more pain to your soul than it could withstand, even with my grace latched onto it. It called to me through our bond,” Lucifer explains, looking straight at Sam. “I told you I won’t ever bring you any harm. I care about you, Sam.”

A multitude of emotions crosses Sam’s features as if he can’t decide which one to wear. He grasps the easiest one, indifference tinged with a hint of anger. “Like you care about the rest of humankind?” He almost sneers.

“No,” he says calmly. “I despise humans. They’re chaotic and imperfect and they destroy more than they create. But you, Sam, you’re different. You were created for me. We are more alike than you want to admit, and it’s fine, I can wait for you to come around, but please let me heal your soul, let me take away your pain.”

Having Lucifer plead him to heal his soul is not something he sees everyday, which is why he’s stunned by the earnestness he sees in the Devil’s eyes.

He shakes his head anyway. Stubborn, stubborn little human he is. “No. I won’t let you touch me again.”

“But you’re in agony!” Lucifer stresses the word, a hint of frustration coloring his tone.

“I’ve been in agony before. I can deal with it.”

“No, you can’t. At least not alone. You don’t have the power to heal yourself--”

“Gabriel,” Sam interrupts before he thinks his words through. “Gabriel must know something. I can ask him to search for a way to--”

“Gabriel can’t do anything to heal your soul,” Lucifer says, eyes darkening with -- anger? The room trembles around Sam and the air feels thicker and harder to breathe. “He’s been trying to do it for the past week and you’re still not healed. What do you think that means?” The anger in his voice is more pronounced and the room shakes without restraint.

But Sam’s a hunter and if he knows something about dealing with powerful creatures it's to manipulate his fear into the perfect push to act -- or talk.

“No.” He shakes his head with finality. “I don’t want you to poke inside me and do something that would give you full control over me,” he says and everything stills.

Lucifer looks at Sam as if he doesn’t recognizes him. “I would never--”

“And yet you did,” the hunter interrupts him swiftly. “You manipulated my emotions back then to suit your mood, to make me pliant. Now tell me if that doesn’t scream control to you.”

“I…” For the first time since Sam met Lucifer, the archangel is speechless. He thought it would have been something close to impossible for beings so old and full of wisdom, but Lucifer is stunned by Sam’s words. “Sam, that was never my intention. I never wanted to control you. I only dulled your emotions because they were hurting you and making you more confused that you were. It’s--”

This time, Lucifer cuts himself off deliberately, as if he didn’t choose his words carefully and was about to say something he didn’t want to say.

“It’s what?” Sam presses, never one to miss a beat. If this is the time when they speak their mind, then better make sure that everything is covered (or spilled).

“The reason why you felt so confused and uncomfortable in your own skin was because I shouldn’t have let you touch my wings.” He’s not looking at Sam directly, but rather off to one side. Sam finds this curious. “You weren’t meant to access those memories of the time… the time when you were in heaven. When I put you to sleep was because I feared for your fragile psych, so I locked those memories back again.

But you already formed a facsimile connection to your soul by then and the residues of it created a chaos within your emotions. I had to dull their intensity so I could heal you and talk with you without your judgement being impaired.”

It’s Sam’s turn to look stricken at Lucifer. That he did not know, and if even now he has a hard time processing those words, he can’t imagine how he would have felt to have memories of a time before Adam and Eve running free in his mind. That would have seriously screwed up with his psych.

He must admit that in a certain way, Lucifer had a valid reason to act the way he did. Still, his stubborn side is not giving up this fight so easily.

“Think about your brother, Sam,” Lucifer speaks up again, changing tactic. “He’s researching for a place where you could be safe, away from anyone that could harm you.” There’s a different anger burning up in his eyes now; an anger that seems directed at someone else. “Don’t you want to help him? Don’t you think that you’d be of more help if your soul wasn’t trying to heal itself and failing each time?”

He knows it's a backhanded strategy to get Sam to accept his offer of help, but Lucifer needs to trace a line between rightfully angry with him and stupidly stubborn.

Sam purses his lips, because the Devil made a hell of a point there (no pun intended). He had been so centered on himself and the problems this bond with the Devil arose that he didn’t spare Dean another glance. His brother. Damn, how could he had been this stupid?

He looks up at Lucifer, meets his eyes and maintains the steady gaze.

“Okay,” he finally says. Lucifer smiles as they get up off the floor. “But don’t think that this gives you any right over me,” he warns him, voice deadly serious.

Lucifer doesn’t respond, because he’s looking up at the ceiling. When he doesn’t move a muscle, Sam looks up too, curious at what had captured the Devil’s attention. As soon as he does that, he finds himself looking at the bedroom from upside down.

Panic sweeps over him and glances down to see the burnt ceiling under his feet. He looks at Lucifer for assurance that he’s not crazy, but he startles when the archangel is within an inch from his face. He leans back, because he was about to go crossed-eyed there and he opens his mouth to ask about this sudden closeness, but Lucifer’s lips are on him and his startle climbs about five thousand notches into plain shell-shocked, because when does the Devil kiss him?

He pushes at him, but Lucifer is as sturdy as damn rock and his lips are cool to the touch and soft, and they fit against his in a way he never would have wanted to find out, but it also soothes something inside him and it makes him feel light like a feather.

Everything comes into clear focus, as if someone cleaned a dirty window. This dream, the reviving of Jess’ death, which triggered his distress, the presence of Lucifer, called on by his anguish and now their kiss. The kiss that’s healing him, his soul. He feels it. Wounds stitching and grace singing. The notes fill him from the inside out and he feels like he’s glowing.

No. He’s really glowing and when he opens his eyes (no recollection of closing them whatsoever) Lucifer is looking at him, staring at him, worshipping him and the two sensations - sight and feeling - clash and mold together to give Sam the ultimate pleasure and he pulls Lucifer closer, much closer, bringing into equation teeth and bites and it’s all stupidly crazy, but also stupidly good.

They kiss with fervour, each wanting to melt into the other, because it feels like too long since they last touched one another. And it is; it has been. Lucifer’s grace sings within Sam’s veins, in his head, down to his toes. It’s such a joyous, wonderful song, that Sam can’t help but soak and try to memorize it.

Too soon the grace retreats from within Sam and Lucifer breaks the kiss, taking a small step back and peering curiously at Sam. There’s amusement etched in there and the hunter feels his cheeks heating up.

“That… was refreshing,” Lucifer says, voice oddly neutral, as if his mind is elsewhere. “And unexpected.”

Sam averts his eyes, looking everywhere but at the archangel. He did not just kiss the Devil into oblivion there. For fuck’s sake, he even used teeth and bit into Lucifer’s lower lip! Surreptitiously he chances a glance at him, eyes zeroing in on the lip in question. There’s no blood there, but they’re visibly redder than before.

He catches Lucifer still staring at him and looks elsewhere again.

“Why are we on the ceiling, though. You couldn’t… do that on the floor?” Sam asks to put a stop at the uncomfortable silence.

“You needed to be as close to your soul as you could be, for me to have access to it,” Lucifer says absentmindedly, still staring at Sam. “Since I’m only a manifestation in your dream, I needed you to act as a link between me and your soul. The ceiling is the barrier between it and your subconscious. It’s your distress that called me, so it has to be through the reason of it that I can reach your soul.”

“And I’m standing in the middle of it,” Sam says, looking down at the patch of scorched ceiling. “This dream feels like a ploy.”

“In a way it is,” Lucifer acquiesces and the hunter looks up at him in surprise. “Your human instincts of self-preservation created this dream to bring you closer to your soul and closer to me. You knew, deep down, that only I could heal you, but you couldn’t see it because of your stubbornness, so your subconscious brought back painful memories to trigger a reaction from you, which then brought me here.”

Sam’s baffled by what Lucifer’s saying. He feels so naked right now (and betrayed by his own self), like it took only a glance of the powerful being to learn all his secrets and sorrows. Thinking about it, it doesn’t sound so impossible, but what Lucifer’s been doing all this time was to wait for Sam to come to him of his own volition.

He left the option in his hands. Sam was free to take it or leave it. And his stubbornness almost killed him -- or damaged him irreparably.

He releases a shaky breath. He thought he knew himself fairly well. It’s hard to admit that Lucifer’s every word sounds true to his ears, because he still hasn’t made up his mind about him. He still doesn’t know the supposed Devil as well as he thought he knew him. Well, what did he expect? Books on lore, written by humans to have any resemblance of being accurate?

Of course each put their two cents on who Lucifer really is.

But he has the real thing right before his eyes (or a manifestation of him, anyway). He has the opportunity to learn the truth behind all that it has been said about him.

“Okay,” Sam says, mustering the courage to look Lucifer in the eye. “I admit I’ve been stubborn and I didn’t give you a chance to explain yourself. I don’t promise, but I’ll try and make a habit of talking to you about anything that doesn’t sit well with me when it’s about you,” he offers.

Lucifer seems to give this serious thought for a couple of seconds and then he looks up at Sam and nods, a small smile adorning his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For any of you who didn't know, the Switzerland invading Liechtenstein is true. [Here you have it](http://hypervocal.com/culture/2014/switzerland-liechtenstein/).
> 
> And the kiss in this chapter was NOT planned. I just went with it as I was writing like a possessed person. I actually intended to leave Sam in pain a chapter or two more, but for reasons, I only made him suffer one chapter. Most probably next chapter will introduce a new character story-wise (old, show-wise).
> 
> If you find any mistakes, please do point them out. I finished the last scene today and just now I finished proof-reading the chapter. It's entirely possible that errors or plain stupid mistakes have escaped my eye :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is. Sorry it took so long to update!

“You’re glowing.” Is the first statement Gabriel ushers out upon seeing Sam enter the living room and it attracts Castiel’s attention.

Sam panics for a moment, thinking that he really is glowing, but looking down at himself he doesn’t see any dubious light radiating from his skin.

“No. Your soul’s glowing with health,” Gabriel amends, looking awed beyond measure. “You called him, didn’t you? he asks and a smirk worms its way up on his lips.

“I... not really,” Sam says, a bit embarrassed. “He just… showed up in my dream.”

“How’ya feeling, Sam?” Dean asks, a cheerful note to his tone and Sam turns around to greet his brother with a hug.

“Better,” he murmurs into Dean’s familiar leather jacket, the rich smell of worn-out leather, motor oil and something preternaturally Dean melting the last crumb of stress and knotted muscles in his body. “It’s good to be back on my feet.”

Dean pats him on the back and they disengage, Dean entering the room with a cold beer in hand. Sam glances at Gabriel, who winks at him and disappears. He doesn’t even sigh at the archangel’s antics. He wouldn’t be Gabriel if he didn’t pop out without a word.

“What are you looking for?” Sam asks as he leafs through the nearest book.

“Another place to set camp,” Dean answers, his gruff voice dismissive. Sam looks up at him.

“We’re moving out? Why?” It’s probably the stupidest question he could think of, because even Castiel has a deadpan look on his usually expressionless face. He swallows drily. ”Okay, stupid question.”

“Understatement,” Dean quips, taking another swig of his beer.

“Dean deems it necessary to change places, since Raphael managed to find you.” Castiel adds helpfully.

“I don’t feel safe here, man. And neither should you.”

“But we have Gabriel. He--” Dean’s set jaw and hard eyes bring Sam to a sudden halt. “You still don’t trust him.” The affirmation stumbles out of his mouth with incredulity.

“Do you?” Dean shoots back, a raised eyebrow.

Sam glances at Castiel, studying him, but he finds nothing of relevant importance there. “I guess.” He’s not sure himself, but he still thinks that Gabriel should be allowed the benefit of doubt, even with older brothers that seem to have beef with Sam one way or the other.

“He didn’t even know you were assaulted, man!” Dean explodes, setting his bottle on the table with a loud thunk. “He should have sensed that there was something wrong in his house, for fuck’s sake! These are his wards he scribbled on the walls!” Dean gestures to the entire room. “You’d think he has some connection to them or something.”

“We don’t, Dean,” Cas intervenes. “Not even archangels.”

“But he tweaked them to allow you to pop in and out whenever you want!”

“Which made the wards somewhat weaker,” Cas admits, and by the slight stress on the words, Sam takes a wild guess that this was something he would have never wanted to admit.

Dean stands up at once, fists clenched at his side and jaw set. “So you say you’ve put a hole into our defence knowingly just because it was convenient to you two?” Anger spills with his words and betrayal glints in his eyes. Cas seems to shrink in on himself, gaze lowered in a veritable impression of a man who has been caught red handed and feels guilty about what he did.

“Dean,” Sam intervenes, standing up, but Dean storms out of the room.

“We need to restock our supplies,” he says, the jingling of keys travelling all the way to the living room, before the door shuts forcefully and silence settles around them like motes of dust.

Sam sighs and turns around to regard the angel. Hunched shoulders and head dipped low don’t look good on his friend.

“Give him some time to clear his head,” Sam tells him reassuringly. “He’ll come around.”

“It won’t erase the fact that we put you in danger.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say to that, because he’s right. Dean wasn’t unjustly angry, even if his reasons leaned more towards keeping Sam away from Lucifer. But maybe lashing out on Castiel, who always tried to do things right and keep them safe, was a bit too much.

His brother has a knack of spilling his anger on the wrong people at times.

He sighs and sits down on the couch, taking the open book Dean’s been going through a minute ago. Cas explains more precisely what his brother seems to be looking for and they return to reading old, dusty books, some of which are dated so far as the tenth and eleventh century.

When he finds out that they’ve been at it for a week now, Sam’s seriously impressed by how much tolerance his brother showed. He’s never spent so much time reading. Not even his porn magazines or the occasional sci-fi book. And that says a lot about Dean’s desire to find a more secure place.

Still, the books won’t get read by themselves, so he stashes away his thoughts and gets back to work.

After about three hours since Sam’s been at it, taking notes of could-be places in a notebook, his stomach brings him out of his thoughts.

“I guess it’s lunchtime,” he tells Cas with a smile. “Do you want anything?” he asks, more out of politeness than anything.

“No, Sam, but thank you.” His smile has more amusement than Sam would like, but he doesn’t comment on it. At least his friend is back to his normal self.

Trudging his way to the kitchen, he makes himself a big sandwich with a few slices of ham and the double of them of tomatoes and lettuce. Hey, since they’re there, why not consume them. It’s not everyday that he gets the luxury of fresh vegetables. Last time he and Dean went to the grocery store, they hadn’t managed to bring back anything. Being assaulted by demons is a foul-proof excuse to forget your groceries, especially when you’ve been beaten to the brink of unconsciousness along the way.

 _I’ve made sure they will never bother you._ The bitter, resentful tone of voice rings in his ears and Sam freezes mid chew as he frantically looks around for any signs that Lucifer has returned.

He swallows reluctantly when he finds nothing that reminds him of the fallen archangel even in the slightest. He shakes his head as he resumes eating. All that sleep must have screwed up some neurons in his brain, because it’s not normal to hear the Devil’s voice when the Devil in question is not even in the same room as you.

_But it is. Normal._

Sam panics this time, because that surely didn’t sound like something his mind might fabricate for whatever fucked up reason. He stares at his half eaten sandwich as he lowers it down on the green plate. He’s not full yet, and neither is his stomach upset, even if the current situation should have set it on edge. He is somehow there, but for a different reason.

He’s not sure it’s a good sign that he can hear Lucifer’s voice in his head.

_Oh, but it is, Sam. It’s a sign that our bond has become stronger than before. Now we can communicate with each other whenever we want._

“Shit!” Sam swears between clenched teeth, hand covering his eyes. What had he done?

 _You helped both of us. Now I’ll know when you’re in danger. I’ll protect you better._ Damn him! He sounds so happy and pleased with himself, as if he just received the Christmas present he desired for so long.

 _Christmas present. You have strange customs. Why would you designate a day for receiving presents when you should receive then everyday?_ A pause. _I’ll keep the date in mind. I could surely bring you something better than a plastic doll and a sparkly stick._

“Hey! Stop poking around my memories!” Sam usher out forcefully. “I didn’t give you permission to wander around in my head! Get out!”

_Sorry, Sammy. I can’t._

“What do you mean you can’t?”

_Our bond is open now. I can do nothing to stop myself from listening to your thoughts or feeling your emotions, just like you can’t stop my thoughts and feelings from reaching you._

“But I don’t feel anything,” Sam confesses indignantly. Lucifer hums.

_I have a much tighter control over my feelings and thoughts, Sam. Besides, many of them you can’t even comprehend._

Sam scoffs at his sandwich. “So only you have inside scoops of what’s going on with Sam Winchester’s life, huh?” he says bitterly. A wave of warmth and amusement crashes over him, pulling out a gasp from a stunned hunter. “What was that?”

_That was my nonverbal response to your question._

“So you think it’s funny?” He can’t tamp down on the frustration he feels at the unfair situation.

_As much as your frustration is right now._

He looks down at his sandwich, debating if he’s hungry enough to finish it or it’s a lost cause. Come to think of it, did the ‘feeling his emotions’ thing extends to his tastes, too? Because if so, then he should put a stop to all this psychic connection they had going on already. It’s already too invasive.

 _I can feel your emotions and hear your thoughts, Sam. Not what you taste._ Another wave of amusement trickles into him and it feels so foreign that it makes Sam squirm in his seat.

“Will you stop doing that?”

 _Doing what?_ He’s definitely teasing Sam, and he didn’t need any reading on Lucifer’ emotions to know that.

“Ambushing me with your emotions.”

_Ah, but you complained about how unfair it was that you couldn’t feel me._

And no. Sam is still on track with his train of thought. There’s no way it sidestepped into unnecessary dirty images involving the Devil paired with some feeling up. He’d have denied it to his last breath, if the chuckle that echoes in his mind isn’t proof that Lucifer didn’t miss a beat.

_In due time, Sam. We will get to that, too._

Sam snorts. “How about not?”

_Why not? Do you think I could not perform that kind of position? It might not look it, but this vessel is decently flexible._

“Decently flexible?” He hears himself repeat incredulously and he can’t stop portraying Lucifer in an indecent yoga position, commonly called pretzel.

 _Now that might be a bit too adventurous._ The way Lucifer pitches his voice low and stresses that last word goes straight to Sam’s groin. _But we could test this vessel’s limits._

Sam snorts a laugh, but he immediately covers his mouth and looks towards the living room like a school boy who’s in the process of stealing a couple of cookies without his mother’s permission. He slides down on the counter, arms covering his head.

Jesus, he’s out of his mind! Is this happening? Is he talking about provocative yoga positions with _Lucifer_?

_I'm not against experimenting, if that's what you want, Sam._

"It's better if I go back to research." Sam mutters, discarding his sandwich into the bin and making his way to the living room.

 _Research?_ Lucifer quips and Sam imagines a mongoose on his hind legs looking hopeful, and no, bad image. He shouldn't compare Lucifer to animals. He didn't fall that low -- yet.

"Be quiet!" he orders instead and Lucifer complies.

 


End file.
